Floor Statements

Mr. President, thank you.

I thank the Senator from Colorado for the opportunity to speak about Utah's Governor. In a way, I hope he will soon not be Utah's Governor because he has been nominated by the President to be the head of the EPA. On the other hand, we will be sorry to lose him as Utah's Governor because he has done a truly outstanding job. Many of his qualifications have already been discussed here. As I did in the hearing, I would like to speak of him a little bit personally so Members of the Senate can get an understanding of who he is and what qualifications he brings to this particular assignment.

Governor Leavitt and I first became well acquainted when we served together on a strategic planning group formulated to come up with a plan for the Utah State Board of Education. At the time, we were both considerably younger. He particularly looked quite young. He has the advantage of looking younger than he really is. As the Presiding Officer can relate, those of us who are bald look like we are 60 regardless of how old we may be. That is a disadvantage when you are 30 or 40. It becomes an advantage when you get beyond 60 because people think you are younger. Governor Leavitt, with a full head of hair, struck me as, frankly, quite a young man when we first got acquainted. I thought, What is somebody so young and, by implication, inexperienced doing on this particular committee? As soon as he opened his mouth and we started having a conversation, it became very clear what he was doing on that committee; he was very bright; he was extremely well informed; he had many exciting ideas about what ought to be done with respect to Utah's schools and Utah's education.

I derived a great sense of respect for him in that situation and said to people: This is a young man who has a great future. This is a young man who will be doing important things for the State.

Then he showed up in my office one day and said he wanted to talk to me. When I asked why, he said, Well, I am planning to run for Governor and I am here to get your support. I said, Well, I am not going to be able to give you my support for Governor because I am planning to run for the Senate, and it is appropriate that I not endorse any candidate for Governor and I understand it is appropriate that you not endorse any candidate for the Senate. But we began our campaigns together in 1992 and went through the gauntlet

of conventions and primaries that is part of the Utah political scene.

I watched him in that situation. I watched him grow. I watched him flourish. I watched him get engaged in the battle of ideas and emerge from a second-place position to the first-place position where he won the nomination, became the candidate, and then in a three-way race for Governor won the governorship.

He started out with those same kinds of ideas and energy and excitement I had seen when we were talking about school issues some years before. He has been very inventive as Governor. He has come up with ideas that, frankly, a lot of people scoffed at that have come to fruition. He is the driving force, for example, behind the creation of the Western Governors University--a virtual university on line where people can and now have received degrees and graduate degrees that have allowed them to improve their economic standing and their professional standing. Not only has he brought the Western Governors University from an idea to fruition in a very short period of time, but he has also seen to it that the caliber of the material offered by the Western Governors University is of sufficiently high status that it is now fully accredited. A degree from the Western Governors University carries the same accreditation as a degree from the University of Utah or the University of Kansas or, for that matter, the private universities such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, whatever. This is the brainchild and the product of the energy of Michael Leavitt--an idea of taking something that is new in the field and turning it into a final product.

I cite that because I think what we need at the Environmental Protection Agency is someone who has some creative ideas and the drive to try something new and see it through to fruition. That is Michael Leavitt. He is the perfect person for this kind of assignment.

I talked to him when the newspapers first broke the idea that he might receive this position and said, Should I call the White House on your behalf and weigh in to say I think you would be good for this job? He said, No, don't bother. He said, They have talked to me about it and I have told them I don't have any interest. I said, Why don't you have any interest? I was thinking that was probably a good idea on his part, given the difficulties of this position. He suggested the reason he didn't have any interest was because it seemed to him people were looking for a business-as-usual administrator of the EPA, someone who would continue to go through the motions of previous administrators who went through the motions of the administrators who preceded them. No. He said, I told them if you are thinking about doing something else and breaking some new ground, then call me back. But if all you want to do is what you have been doing, I don't have any interest.

That is a very dangerous thing for a nominee to say because it leaves the door open for them to come back after you have refused the position. Obviously, the folks in the White House--particularly the President himself--decided they liked the idea of someone who would attempt to do something a little differently. They liked the idea of someone who would try to break new ground, who would use the experience he had had in breaking new ground in State government to see if there could be some changes for the better at the EPA.

The President himself got hold of Michael Leavitt. It wasn't just someone in the personnel office. These two who had served together as Governors sat down and talked about it. I am not privy to that conversation, but I am sure Governor Leavitt made the same kind of pitch he described to me. If all you want, Mr. President, is business as usual at EPA, I am not your man. But if you are interested in breaking some new ground and doing things a little differently, then I might consider it.

I am assuming that was the conversation which took place between the former Governor of Texas and the then existing Governor of the State of Utah. Whatever the conversation, Michael Leavitt has agreed to take on this assignment.

I have talked to him since he made that agreement. I am delighted with his attitude. He is excited about it. He is determined to view it as a challenge, he is determined to view it as an opportunity, and he is determined to go at it with the same vigor and with the same enthusiasm he went at his new assignment as Governor of the State of Utah.

I can think of no better set of qualifications for someone to have in tackling the position at EPA than the background Governor Leavitt has and the attitude and sense of challenge he possesses. For that reason, I was delighted the EPA committee reported this nomination by a 16-2 margin, indicating that even though there are people who had serious reservations about the past performance of EPA, they were willing to give Governor Leavitt a chance to show us what will happen with respect to the future.

I urge all of my colleagues in the Senate to recognize the background, the enthusiasm, and the attitude this particular nominee has. It would be a great shame if we were to allow this nomination to be derailed because of people's concern about previous administrations at EPA. This nomination, as with all appointments, has to do not so much with the past as with the future.

This nomination has to do with the job Michael Leavitt can do, not with the job that some other Administrator may have done. So I am very hopeful that in this Chamber we will invoke cloture, we will shut off debate and allow Michael Leavitt to have a vote.

If he has a straight up-or-down vote, I think we will see much the same kind of margin we saw in committee with the 16-to-2 vote in favor of reporting him to the Senate. I am hoping for a 70- to 80-, even 90- Member positive vote in the Chamber to give this young man from Utah an opportunity to show the country what he can do in this position.

The people from Utah have seen what he can do. He has maintained an approval rating 70 to 80 percent normally through his entire period of time as our Governor. I believe he can do the same kind of thing for the country.

I urge all of my colleagues to vote for cloture, and then, when it is invoked, to vote for Michael Leavitt.

Mr. President, we have a continual drumbeat going on in this Chamber. It came to a crescendo during the debate over the Iraq supplemental, but it goes on even when there is no legislation on the floor dealing with Iraq. There are several themes of this drumbeat that I would like to address this morning.

The first theme we hear over and over and over again is the theme of faulty intelligence. How could the President have been so stupid as to have acted on faulty intelligence? Occasionally, the enthusiasm for this theme gets carried away to levels that are inappropriate, as we have the accusation that the President was not just misled by faulty intelligence, he deliberately lied. We hear this again and again, particularly in the media: The President is a liar; he deliberately misled the country.

I would like to address that theme for a moment and then another theme we hear over and over which is that the President has made a terrible mistake when he has endorsed the concept of preemptive war. We have these two themes: No. 1, the President is either stupid or a liar because he mishandled the intelligence; and No. 2, he has embraced a historically repugnant doctrine, the doctrine of preemptive war.

On the issue of intelligence, let us understand something about intelligence. It is never hard and fast. It is always an estimate. It is also a guess. It is also the best view of the people who are making intelligence decisions and assessments. And it is often wrong.

Let me give you an example of a President who acted on intelligence that turned out to be wrong. No, let me back away from that, not necessarily a President who acted, a commander who acted on intelligence that turned out to be wrong that had significant international effect.

I was traveling in China with the then-senior Senator from Texas, Phil Gramm, and we met with the Prime

Minister of China, not long after the Americans, under the command of GEN Wesley Clark, had bombed the Chinese Embassy in Serbia. The Chinese were understandably very concerned about that.

We said: It was a mistake. It was an error. And the Chinese Ambassador, with whom we were talking at the time, said: You have the best intelligence in the world. You must have known that was the Chinese Embassy. That was not a hidden fact. That was not a secret. You have the most accurate military in the world. You did that deliberately.

Then he pointed out to us that was not just the Chinese Embassy; that was, in fact, the headquarters of the Chinese intelligence operation throughout Central Europe. So we bombed an embassy and we took out their intelligence capability. They said: You did that deliberately. We said: No; it was a mistake.

I remember Senator Shelby saying: The proof of the fact that it is a mistake is that nobody would have been stupid enough to do that deliberately. Then the Chinese Ambassador said: If it was a mistake, why hasn't somebody been fired? And for that, we had no particular answer.

Checking into it, we found the reason that happened is because GEN Wesley Clark, the commander of NATO, was demanding targets: I need more targets. I'm running out of targets. And under the pressure of those demands from that commanding general, the CIA came up with targets, and they came up with an old target with bad information, under the pressure from a commander who was anxious to keep bombing even though he had run out of legitimate targets. In that pressure, a tragic mistake was made, and America's relationship with China was seriously damaged in that situation.

So intelligence is not always perfect. But in the postmortem of 9/11, we have seen how people want to have it both ways. They look at the intelligence that was available pre-9/11, and they say: How can you have missed this clue? You should have taken action, Bush administration, on the basis of this clue.

Then, when we have information with respect to Iraq that turns out not to be exactly accurate, we are told: How could you have been so misled? How could you have interpreted this way?

One CIA official said: If we had not acted on the basis of the information that we had prior to the war in Iraq, if we had not warned the President in the way we did, we would have been held in violation of our duty, particularly if something had happened.

Then the naysayers, who are saying, ``How could you be misled by this intelligence,'' would be saying, ``How could you have missed this clue?'' They attempt to put the President and this administration in a no-win situation. No matter what the President does, he is attacked by the people on the other side of the aisle.

Now, finally, this issue of preemptive war. I will not take the time to go into a full discussion, but I say, particularly to those Senators who pride themselves on their sense of history, let us look back in history and ask ourselves, what would have happened if Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain, had adopted the attitude of preemptive war when he went to Munich? What would have happened if he had sat down with Adolph Hitler and done what Winston Churchill was urging him to do, which is the same doctrine that George W. Bush had put forward, and said to Hitler: If you attack Czechoslovakia, there will be war. If you move ahead, there will be war?

Neville Chamberlain and some of the people around him said: Hitler does not represent an imminent threat. Hitler is not talking about bombing London now. If we give him Czechoslovakia, he will feel nice towards us. We need to worry about international opinion. We need to see to it that everybody gets together in the international community. And Czechoslovakia does not affect us.

Chamberlain said: Those are people far away from us with whom we have nothing to do, a speech that could have been made on the floor of this Senate as people talk about Iraq: They are far away from us, people with whom we have nothing to do. And the threat is not imminent.

Churchill was long-headed enough to know that if Hitler got control of Czechoslovakia, he would get control of the finest machine shops in Europe, he would add to his military machine, and he would be prepared to wage world war. If Hitler were denied Czechoslovakia, we now know in history, his own generals would have deposed him for being too risky.

But Neville Chamberlain said: No. We can't wage any kind of preemptive war. We have to wait until he attacks us before we can justify it. And 6 million Jews went to the concentration camps and into the ovens, and countless millions were killed in the Second World War because we did not take preemptive action when we could have. I say ``we''--the Western World did not.

Chamberlain was hailed as a hero when he came home, and the motion to support the action that he had taken went through the House of Commons by huge margins. When Winston Churchill stood up and said: We have suffered defeat of the first magnitude, he got only a handful of votes. But history has not been kind to Mr. Chamberlain. History has validated the position that Winston Churchill took, a position which George W. Bush is applying to modern conditions.

Those who value history should read all of history before they stand on the Senate floor and attack the President of the United States for a doctrine that they say is repugnant.

I yield the floor.

Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, it was my privilege to be in the chair during the exchange of views between the two Senators from Illinois. I could not resist the opportunity to take the floor now and add my experience to that which has been referred to.

The senior Senator from Illinois spoke of those who did not have a legal background, and I fit into that category. I have never been in court, except as a juror and occasionally as a witness. I have never been to law school. However, I would just share this one experience with the Senate with respect to class action lawsuits and how they can be abused.

When my father left the Senate, he was invited, as is often the case for those who have senior experience in business, to serve on a number of boards of directors. He went on one particular board, thinking it was a relatively safe kind of activity for him, only to be distressed at the beginning of the next calendar year when he was served with this pile of papers. There was a lawsuit being filed on behalf of the shareholders of that particular company, and my father was named as the principal defendant.

Somewhat disturbed by this, he called the general counsel of the firm and asked what was going on.

Oh, said the general counsel, nothing to worry about. You are named because members of the board of directors are listed alphabetically and Bennett comes ahead of any other name. So you are named: Bennett et al. Don't worry, we will take care of this.

He said: Of what am I being accused? Of what is the board being accused?

Well, said the general counsel, this happens every year. He said: The members of the board have a compensation plan that is tied to the profitability of the company. Whenever the company increases its profitability by formula, the directors' pay increases by a similar formula amount.

My father said: That's very clear. It's outlined. What is the cause of this class action lawsuit being brought on behalf of all of the shareholders of the company?

Well, said the general counsel, this lawyer every year files a lawsuit on behalf of the shareholders, claiming that the board of directors is looting the company for its own purposes. That is, members of the board are trying to enrich themselves on the basis of this increase in compensation at the expense of the shareholders.

My father said: What do we do? Do you go to court and prove that this is a legitimate activity?

No, said the general counsel, that costs too much money. For us to go to court would cost us more in legal fees than the amount the lawyer will settle for.

What amounts are we talking about, my father asked.

He was told by the general counsel: The lawyer who files this suit will settle for $100,000. It would cost us more

than $100,000 to defend our position, so every year when the formula kicks in and the directors' compensation is increased, the lawyer files his lawsuit, we send him a check for $100,000, the lawsuit goes away, and we forget this until the next year.

That is extortion, plain and simple. Yet the general counsel would say, with some accuracy, the shareholders are better served if we simply pay him his $100,000 than if we go to court and defend ourselves. Even though we would win, we would end up paying $200,000 or $250,000 or some number like that. So, he said, we have come to the conclusion the best thing to do for the shareholders is simply settle this class action lawsuit every year for $100,000. The lawyer knows we will do that. So every year he files the lawsuit, we send him the check, the plaintiffs in whose behalf he is suing get nothing because his legal fee for filing the suit is $100,000, and we simply go through this charade every year.

I am happy to report that this particular lawyer, as I understand it, decided to do this in some other instances and Merrill Lynch, the large brokerage firm, took him to court. They spent close to $1 million in legal fees proving he was wrong and, furthermore, proving he had acted in a frivolous manner and ultimately put him out of business. The shareholders of Merrill Lynch were paying for an action that benefited the shareholders of the company on whose board my father sat, and many others.

We can be grateful that Merrill Lynch was willing to accept that financial burden in order to put a stop to this practice. But it demonstrates that standing on the floor of the Senate and deciding how valuable class action lawsuits are does not properly address the problem that this, and similar legislation, has sought to solve.

I wanted to add that personal experience to the debate that has been going on here so anybody who is following the debate will understand that it is not a question of whether one should allow class action lawsuits. It is not a question of whether plaintiffs are entitled to relief as a result of joining a class. It is a question of cleaning up abuses that are carried on by lawyers who say, in the words of one of them: I have a perfect law practice. I have no clients.

They file class action lawsuits on behalf of classes, but they are not in fact real clients. The lawyers benefit, ultimately to the detriment of the shareholders of the companies that are being sued. These shareholders are individuals. We are not talking about companies as if they were abstract entities. They are individuals who are being hurt by improper practices. Those are the kinds of practices this legislation seeks to resolve.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I understood that it would go back and forth between Republicans and Democrats.

Mr. President, I take the floor to make a few personal observations. I don't want to revisit all of the arguments that have been made over and over again. But I do want to make a few statements just for the record. I want to make it very clear, speaking for myself--and I think for other Members of the Senate, but they can speak for themselves--that I have never challenged the patriotism, the motives, or the rights of any Senator who has disagreed with the President on this vote.

I have utmost respect for the senior Senator from West Virginia. I have watched him serve for many years. I watched him serve while I was a staff member for my father. He and my father served together in this body for many years. I would never, under any circumstances, suggest that I was challenging his patriotism in any way. I do think he is profoundly wrong in the decision he has made with respect to this war. But I recognize that he has every right to make that decision. He has every right to defend that decision in as vigorous language as possible, but I want to make it clear to him and to any who may have misunderstood that under no circumstances and at no time have I ever challenged his patriotism.

I am not sure I know of any other Senator who has ever challenged his patriotism. I hope we will understand that as we disagree, as vigorously as we do on this issue, we are not, in fact, engaging in what has been called the politics of personal destruction.

I believe the Senator from West Virginia is wrong because I think his world view is wrong with respect to where the world is and where the President is going in the postwar world.

We all celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war. There were books written about it. One was entitled ``The End of History.'' We found that history did not come to an end with the end of the cold war, that the challenges to American lives and American interests around the world did not disappear with the Soviet Union, and that we have additional challenges today.

I will not suggest that the Bush administration has done everything right. I have had my moments of disagreement with this administration, some of them relatively serious and some of them relatively recent. But I am behind the President in this effort because I think his overall global view is the correct one.

The primary challenge to peace in the world right now is coming out of the Middle East. For a variety of reasons, for a variety of historic patterns, that part of the world is producing the principal challenge to peace everywhere.

Europeans feel more secure than they have ever felt in their lives, and perhaps accurately and properly so. The Soviet Union is gone. The age-old rivalries between the Germans and the French and the other principalities in Europe are over. They are striving to write a European constitution and bring themselves together in a legitimate economic way. They feel more secure after centuries of war than they have ever felt in their lives. They are no longer the target. We are. They are no longer the focus of those who would bring instability to the world. We are. And we saw that happen in dramatic fashion on September 11, 2001.

The President has said there is no connection between what happened on September 11, 2001, and Iraq, and that is true, and the President never claimed such a connection. But there is an overall connection in the sense that those warriors for their cause who attacked us on September 11, 2001, came out of an area and a culture and an attitude that exist in the Middle East that must be addressed in the Middle East, even if there are no direct links, even if there was no direct funding, even if there was not a case that a law enforcement official could make in a court of law.

We must recognize the significance of the Middle East as the source of instability in the world and recognize those players in the Middle East who are part of that instability. I believe Saddam Hussein was a principal player for instability.

We can argue, appropriately, and we can go back and examine the mistakes that were made with respect to Saddam Hussein. We can say there are statements made prior to the attack on Iraq which, in retrospect, turned out not to be true. I can list some of them.

No. 1, I heard in this Chamber that we were going to get body bags coming back from Iraq by the thousands. We were told in this Chamber that we were going to have house-to-house fighting in Baghdad, door-to- door assaults. We were told that our troops were going to be gassed-- that from people who voted against the resolution to give the President the authority to go forward.

It turns out all of those predictions are not true. Do I attack the people who made those predictions as having botched it? I suggest they read the intelligence and came to the wrong conclusion. I also recognize that whenever this Nation or any nation goes to war, you never know exactly what is going to happen.

This is perhaps a small example, but it has struck me, as I read the history of the Second World War. As carefully as we planned the assault on Normandy, as carefully as we did the disinformation to get Hitler to think we were going to attack someplace other than we did, the disguises, the false information that was put out, all of the rest of the intelligence that was done, we made one very fundamental and, in retrospect, stupid mistake. In all of the training of our troops in advance of the Normandy invasion, we assumed that the hedgerows between fields in France would be the same height as the hedgerows between fields in Great Britain.

So as we trained in Great Britain, we trained with hedgerows that were about knee height and then found ourselves in France with hedgerows that were almost as high as a building. It completely disrupted all of our tank assaults and plans because as a tank would try to go up and over one of those hedgerows, it would be vulnerable to fire from the other side. They could hit the underbelly of the tank because its tracks were exposed and the base of the tank itself was exposed and an artillery shell could take it out instantly.

It was improvisation on the field from a GI who used to work on a farm who helped create what would be a version of a snowplow on the front of a tank to drive the tank through the hedgerow. An incredible intelligence mistake of something as simple as that, and they could have determined that if they could have found a French farmer to talk to.

Did this Chamber ring with accusations that President Roosevelt had lied to the American people about our plan in Normandy? Were there denunciations of General Marshall or General

Eisenhower because they made that intelligence error? Some would say the analogy doesn't hold, and certainly there are many aspects of it that do not, but the point I think is legitimate. The intelligence failures that we now know occurred with respect to Iraq were not deliberate lies. The intelligence failures that have accompanied every American military action are the best efforts of human beings doing the best they can under pressure and always making mistakes.

What matters is the overall world view and strategic direction, and, as I said, I believe George W. Bush has the right strategic direction. He recognizes that the instability in the world is coming from the Middle East; that we must do everything we can to deal with those characters who are responsible for that instability. And he made the decision that one of those characters was Saddam Hussein.

I cannot believe anyone can look back on it and say that particular decision was the wrong one. As I have said here before, one of the first people who alerted me to Saddam Hussein and his capacity to spread instability throughout the world was Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State, as we met with her in S-407 and heard her outline the description of weapons of mass destruction that were in Iraq. We heard her boss, the President of the United States, President Clinton, do the same thing in public fora.

Was there any reason to believe they were for any purpose trying to mislead the American people? We might say they were wrong based on what we now know, but they were wrong, if they were, because of the fog of uncertainty over the intelligence reports all of us had. They made the best judgments they could make on the basis of the best information they had, and then they moved ahead. President Bush did exactly the same thing.

There are those who say he has squandered our good will in the world. Everybody loved us after September 11. There were demonstrations in the streets in Europe, demonstrations of support, demonstrations of sympathy. How long would those demonstrations have nourished our position if indeed we had done nothing following September 11?

Oh, it is all right to do something as long as everybody is with you. It is all right to do something as long as everybody agrees. Well, it seemed to me the United Nations agreed. Fifteen to nothing strikes me as a fairly definite vote in the Security Council for resolution 1441.

Then when the United States said, all right, resolution 1441 is not being complied with, resolution 1441 says if it is not complied with, there will be serious consequences--serious consequences is U.N. speak for war--how about it, U.N.?

Oh, no, no, said members of the Security Council.

I would be happy to yield.

I am glad to have the Senator tell me of his schedule and I shall cut it as short as I possibly can, because I do not want to disconcert the Senator in any way.

No, I do not need to go on further because it has all been said.

I will conclude.

Mistakes have been made. I think both sides can admit that and should recognize that. People have been offended by the administration on both sides of the aisle. I think we can recognize that and admit that.

The fundamental question to me is whether the overall direction in which the President is trying to take the country is the right one. As I study history and as I listen to the reports that come back from Iraq, as I talk to the people in Utah who are serving there--we have a higher percentage of our Armed Forces who are Reserve and Guard in Iraq than any other State--I am convinced the President is right in his overall direction. Whatever course corrections need to be made we can talk about, but when all is said and done, this President has done the right thing.

I am proud to have voted to give him the authority in the first instance, and I am proud to be one of the 87 Senators today who have voted to give him the continuing support he requires.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Denese Merritt, a congressional fellow in Senator Gordon Smith's office, be granted floor privileges during the debate.

Mr. President, I rise in support of the amendment by the Senator from Oklahoma, and I think perhaps a little discussion about the history of debt and debt repudiation, debts being placed upon countries that have been defeated or liberated, might be in order.

In anticipation perhaps of this debate, a member of the staff of the Joint Economic Committee, Melanie Mickelson, prepared a memo for me and other members of the committee entitled ``Iraqi Debt and Reconstruction.'' I ask unanimous consent that this memo be printed in the Record following my remarks.

Mr. President, when we think of forgiveness of debt or repudiation of debt, we think back usually to Germany, to the debt that was placed on Germany at the end of the First World War by the Versailles Treaty and the great political hay Adolf Hitler was able to make out of this debt as he told the people of Germany that the Versailles Treaty had been a stab in the back and the people who had imposed that debt on Germany were the people who were Germany's primary enemies.

I do not want to make too much out of that aspect of Hitler's rise to power, but there was no question but what the enormous debt placed on Germany at the end of the First World War was destabilizing on the country and made it very difficult for Germany to bring itself back as a viable nation and made Germany potentially vulnerable to the kind of political appeal Adolf Hitler represented.

Let us put this in some perspective with respect to Iraq and what we are talking about here. At this time, the debt that was placed upon Germany was roughly two times Germany's gross domestic product, or GDP. To put that into perspective for the United States, right now our debt is roughly half of America's GDP. If we assume the GDP is running at $11 trillion in round figures, we would say the debt Germany faced by comparison would be similar to putting a debt on the United States of $22 trillion. That, of course, takes one's breath away when you think about the impact of that on the United States. Twenty-two trillion dollars. How in the world, even with as vital and vibrant an economy as we have, would we be able to survive if we had a national debt of $22 trillion? That was the debt that had such significant historic impact on Germany in the last century.

What are we talking about with respect to the debt Iraq currently faces? Is it half their GDP, as it is in the United States? Would it be as burdensome as the German debt at two times GDP? No, neither of those figures applies. When we talk about the size of the debt Iraq currently carries compared to their present GDP, we are talking about ten times GDP; not two times but ten times current GDP. Again, to translate that into numbers we can compare to America, that would mean that America, the strongest economy in the world, with our present GDP of roughly $11 trillion, would be saddled with a debt in excess of $120 trillion.

How prosperous would America be if we were faced with that kind of a debt load? Obviously, it would sink us, even though we have the strongest economy in the world.

We have people around here who are worried because our current debt is roughly half of GDP, and to talk about ten times GDP is absolutely impossible. So the logical thing to do is for all of the countries to respond to the call that is represented by the amendment of the Senator from Oklahoma and forgive the debt.

Why? Let us go through the reasons. One of them has been raised by Senator Dorgan. That is, this debt was incurred on behalf of a brutal regime which has been overthrown. Some of the debtor countries might say, when there is a coup in a country and the government is overthrown, whoever takes over takes over the obligations. Saddam Hussein was not overthrown by a coup from the Iraqis. He was overthrown by the 82nd Airborne. He was overthrown by the United States of America and the marines, by the British troops, the Polish troops, and the other coalition members that joined us in overthrowing that government.

So while the Iraqi people are very grateful Saddam Hussein has been overthrown, while the Iraqi people rejoice that Saddam Hussein has been overthrown, the Iraqi people by no means are responsible for the debt that survives because he was overthrown. They were the victims of the debt, not the beneficiaries or perpetrators of the debt. For that reason, they should not be held accountable.

There are other reasons. There are sound economic reasons. We have a principle of bankruptcy in this country. When, as a result of circumstances, whether they were caused or just out of somebody's control, someone finds himself absolutely incapable of repaying the debt, we go through bankruptcy court and say we are going to give you an opportunity for a fresh start. We are going to give you an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and move forward. We are going to discharge your debt through bankruptcy.

If any country has been reduced to bankruptcy, it is Iraq. The GDP I described is substantially below what their potential earning power will be, but they can never realize that earning power if they are not free from their past debts by virtue of a bankruptcy action.

What the Senator from Oklahoma is proposing is essentially the countries that hold the debt allow the Iraqis to file bankruptcy; that the countries that hold the debt say, we recognize reality. We recognize we are never, ever going to get this money.

There are some who might say, yes, but Iraq has all that oil and eventually maybe they will be able to give us this money, so let's just restructure the debt. Let's just say okay, no payments for a while, no payments on principal, interest is deferred, we will give you a chance to get on your feet, and then we will collect the debt.

That is not a principle that applies in reality with respect to most bankruptcy situations. Even those who have the ability to earn money later on can get everything discharged with bankruptcy if it is clear the existence of the debt as it stands is going to prevent them from earning money later on.

The most significant return that can come to the countries that are currently holding Iraqi debt will come from a vibrant Iraqi economy with which they can open meaningful trade relations.

Think of what the potential of Iraq is in terms other than oil. We held a hearing on this in the Joint Economic Committee. Of course, the primary focus was on oil revenue, but I was interested to discover that Iraq has other things besides oil. Iraq is blessed with fertile soil. Iraq is blessed with water. Iraq has a history, pre-Saddam Hussein, of being a net exporter of food. In other words, an economically healthy Iraq, rebuilding its infrastructure, reclaiming its opportunity to move water around the country through canals and pipelines and starting irrigation can be an Iraq that can have a vibrant agricultural sector; an Iraq that can then create a manufacturing sector to provide the farm implements that are necessary to support its agriculture; an Iraq that can have a middle class that can buy things; that can have a society that is not just based on oil.

It can become, properly reconstructed, one of the most vibrant economies in the region. It can outstrip some of the economies around it that are dependent solely upon oil and

thereby become an example of capitalism in the region, from which we and others around Iraq can reap enormous benefits. Those benefits, properly reaped, will establish greater economic value than the collection of the debt.

This is the prospect you have here. If we wipe out all of the debt, if the countries respond to the plea contained in the amendment by the Senator from Oklahoma and forgive their debts so a vibrant Iraq can be built without the shadow of debt hanging over it, those very countries that currently hold the debt can benefit with the opportunity for trade with a vibrant and vital Iraq.

I congratulate the Senator from Oklahoma in proposing his amendment. I hope it will pass overwhelmingly as a message to those countries that do hold Iraqi debt, to say to them the United States recognizes the importance of allowing Iraq to declare bankruptcy as if it were, if you will, an American corporation. The United States recognizes that the hope of the future will come from allowing all of this to happen, allowing these debts to disappear, and allowing Iraq to get on with their reconstruction.

Exhibit 1

Joint Economic Committee

Memo: Iraqi Debt and Reconstruction.

Date: October 9, 2003.

The ABC's of Iraqi Debt

Dealing with debt accrued by Saddam Hussein and the Baath

party is a lynchpin to Iraqi reconstruction. According to

Businessweek, Iraq owes $216 billion. Of that, $32 billion is

war reparations, owed mainly to Kuwait. Loans comprise $127

billion of the debt, and contracts agreed to during the past

ten years racked up $57 billion. Other estimates of total

debt skate from $95 billion to $350 billion (the Bush

administration calculates Iraqi debt to be $200 billion, as

reported by CRS).

The debt's creditors include a long list of nations, as

compiled by Jubilee Iraq, an organization of British origin

dedicated to the repudiation of Iraqi debts. Table 1 displays

the list of nations as well as amounts owed. In addition to

these nations and organizations, Iraq also owes the IMF and

World Bank a total of $150 million, as reported by

Representative Carolyn Maloney at the June 11, 2003 JEC

Hearing.

A Second Germany?

In American history, precedents of debt repudiation focus

on post-war Germany. Following WWI, Germany's economy was

shallow with debts amounting to two times German GDP. The

Treaty of Versailles pointed out German guilt and obligation

to pay war reparation, however the United States renounced

all reparations and did not sanction the treaty. Due to

German government resistance and inability to collect funds,

the Dawes Plan of 1924 reorganized the Reichsbank under

Allied supervision and created a tax system to fund

reparation payments. Reparations to the European Allied

nations made the bulk of their lend-lease payments to the

United States. Germany staggered under heavy debt as Europe

suffered through the 1920 depression. The Young Plan (1929)

reduced the sum Germany owed, delineating a distinct dollar

amount as well as how to collect it through budgeting and a

transportation tax. In 1931, President Hoover issued a one-

year moratorium on all international debts. The Lausanne Pact

of 1932 substituted bond issues for reparation debt, but

Adolf Hitler repudiated all WWI reparations while in office.

Payment resumed in 1953 by West Germany.

The debts owed to the U.S. by our WWI allies were defaulted

by 1934 excepting Hungary, which did so in 1939, Finland,

which paid in full, and Russia. Russia repudiated the debt,

owing to its becoming the Union of Soviet Socialist

Republics.

After WWII, the Allies received German reparations in the

form of assets and industrial equipment. Because of

disagreements between the USSR and U.S. regarding payments,

West and East Germany formed, each paying reparations to

their respective political counterpart. The U.S. ended German

payments in 1952, the USSR ended payments in 1953. Germany

paid reparations to its former allies, against U.S.

advisement. The United States collected war reparations from

Germany's ally, Japan, through 1949, and renounced all

further payments in 1951.

economic implications

Iraqi debt differs from German post-war debt in a major

way. Germans dealt with a debt twice the size of the

country's GDP. Iraq faces debt estimated to be ten times

national output (BusinessWeek). The payment of such an amount

is near impossible, even with the development and future

revenues of oil resources. Placing this burden on a new

government cripples Iraq's ability to accumulate capital,

expand production, and increase the standard of living.

Repudiating this debt also sends the red light to creditors

who loan to sketchy governments, in this case, nations whose

loans were used to amass Hussein's weaponry and technology.

Some argue the new government will have trouble obtaining

loans with such history of repudiation. However, no moral

hazard issue exists; the loans forgiven belong to Saddam, not

the Coalition Provisional Authority or the government that

may follow.

Those on the opposing bench feel repudiating Saddam's debt

will jostle the credit market and create uncertainty now and

whenever government turnovers occur. This cannot be the case.

Iraq is such a unique situation; few countries, if any, can

follow this paradigm.

On a side note, Basil Al-Rahim, founder of the Iraq

Foundation, Spoke of creating a debt trading system in Iraq.

At the June 11, 2003 JEC hearing on transforming Iraq's

economy, Al-Rahim spoke of trading debt for points in a

system that would use the points in dealings of concessions,

licenses, and contracts (see p 20-21 of the JEC transcript).

On behalf of the Senator from Texas, Mrs. Hutchison, I yield myself the first 30 minutes in morning business.

Mr. President, we have come back from the break. Most Members, I imagine, have had the same kind of experience I have had in meeting with my constituents. We have discovered the question of what we should be doing in Iraq is foremost on our constituents' minds. Second, we have discovered--at least I have--that there is great concern about the size of the deficit. Those two issues were joined in debate in the Senate before we left for the break. I think it appropriate we talk about them together now that the break is over.

Let me first turn to the question of the deficit and the debate that took place in this Chamber with respect to the $87 billion that has been requested by the President to pay for the war activities and the reconstruction of Iraq. We were told in this Chamber we had to raise taxes by $87 billion to pay for this, and that if we did not, we would see the deficit go up by $87 billion. We defeated that amendment, but there were those with whom I met during the break who still had that view.

The interesting thing we discovered during the break was that the projections for the size of the deficit changed. This is no surprise to anyone who has spent time paying attention to the deficit. As I have said in this Chamber over and over and as I will repeat over and over, the one thing I know with respect to the deficit projections, or surplus projections when those were the order of the day, is that they are wrong. I do not know if they are wrong on the high side or wrong on the low side but I do know they are wrong.

The other thing I know is that the further out they go, the more likely they are to be wrong. That is, a 10-year projection is absolutely certain to be wrong; a 5-year projection has a 99.94 percent chance of being wrong; a 3-year projection might be a little bit closer; and so on with a 2-year projection. The only ones that come really close to being accurate are the very near term projections.

The interesting thing that happened during the break was that the near-term projections of the size of this year's deficit changed. They went down. In other words, we found out during the last week that those who spend their time looking at the size of the deficit have now looked at the numbers, now looked at the revenues coming into the Federal Government, and now project the current deficit will be roughly $85 billion less than was projected when we had the debate.

If we had had those numbers during the debate, obviously I would have referred to them to point out that it is not necessarily the size of the tax rate that determines the amount of tax revenue. That is a truth, again, that we repeat over and over but that gets forgotten over and over. What determines the amount of tax revenue is the amount of economic activity that takes place in the economy as a whole tied to the tax rate, not the tax rate itself. If you set the tax rate too high, you guarantee the economic activity will slow and the tax take will go down.

We cut the tax rate at the beginning of this administration, we cut it again last year, and we are now seeing economic activity pick up to the point that tax revenues have gone up. As I say, according to those who are now projecting this year's deficit, the tax revenues have surprised us to the point that we are now going to have roughly $85 billion more in revenue than was projected just a month ago.

That is a coincidental number because it comes very close to the $87 billion we are asking for. I will not suggest in any sense that we should tie those two together. The closeness is purely coincidental. Nonetheless, it demonstrates that those who want to use the deficit as the reason for support of their opposition to what we are doing in Iraq are going to have to find another excuse because the economy is responding to the tax treatment that came out of this Congress. In that response we are getting more tax revenue, and it is going to be less of a financial burden on this country than we thought it would be even as recently as a month ago.

All right. Let me turn now to the other argument we hear, over and over and over, in a constant drumbeat, with respect to Iraq; that is, the argument that this administration somehow misled the American people, misled the world by claiming Saddam Hussein was a threat. Then you get into the details of that claim, and they say he had no weapons of mass destruction, his economy was in ruins, he did not have the ability to threaten his neighbors, he was no threat or, if we can go back to a phrase I have seen some columnists use: Saddam Hussein was no Hitler.

I want to address that this morning. I would hope in this Chamber, of all places, we would have a sense of history, we would understand what really went on in times past, and what really is going on in a historical framework in our present time.

Let me take that phrase, ``Saddam Hussein was no Hitler,'' and use it as the framework for this kind of examination. If we go back in history to the time of Hitler, we can discover a time when I think it could be said accurately that Hitler was no Hitler. Let me explain what I mean by that.

The Hitler we think of when we look back in history now is the Hitler who stood at the head of a major army of a major nation state waging world war upon all of the other nations around him. Hitler did not start out as that kind of a Hitler. He started out as a politician with a relatively small following and a bitter message in a world of turmoil.

When he became the chancellor of all of Germany, he was a minority politician leading just one party of a series of parties. The primary individuals in Germany at the time thought by making him chancellor they could buy him off and use him and his party in a way that would allow them to continue their power. They misjudged him. When he became chancellor, he, of course, moved to consolidate his power rather than to cooperate with anyone.

He then led Germany into a very risky military operation. He moved to reclaim land that had been taken from Germany in the First World War and ceded to France. If the French Army--arguably the largest on the continent at the time--had confronted him in that move, it would have meant the end of his political career; it would have made sure that nazism, the Nazi party would have disappeared, and Hitler would have been gone. But the French were afraid of a little bit of combat, they were afraid of a little bit of confrontation, and they allowed Hitler to take over that territory.

Well, without going into a complete history of the time, let's go forward to the pivotal event that preceded the Second World War, the Conference at Munich.

Here are the circumstances that led to that event: Hitler had designs on Czechoslovakia. Hitler insisted that Czechoslovakia belonged to Germany and announced he was going to take it, and take it by force. The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, contacted Hitler and said: Can we meet one more time before you act to take Czechoslovakia by force? Hitler agreed, and they met in Munich, Germany.

Chamberlain was terrified that war might break out. Chamberlain was afraid Great Britain was not ready for war. Chamberlain was anxious to give Hitler whatever he could, and, ultimately, Chamberlain gave Hitler Czechoslovakia. Without the British honoring the implied guarantee they would prevent any invasion of Czechoslovakia, Hitler was free to take over that country.

Now, again, if we look at it through the lens of Hitler at the top of his power, we would say, well, he proposed to swallow Czechoslovakia by his tremendous army. In fact, however, Hitler did not have a tremendous army prior to Munich. He had one on paper, but he did not have one in actuality. His generals were terrified as to what would happen to that army if, indeed, it was

ordered into the field against the combined forces of the British and the Czechs.

Indeed, there is evidence that Hitler's generals were prepared to depose him, to overthrow him, and to take Germany out from under him if, in fact, the British stood firm in Czechoslovakia. But instead of standing firm, the British Prime Minister said: Why do we care about people who live so far away from us, with whom we have nothing to do? And he gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

Now, it was not just that he swallowed a small country. If we look back on the history of the time, Czechoslovakia had some of the finest factories capable of producing war materiel of any country in Europe. It had some of the finest machine shops and other skills. By taking Czechoslovakia, Hitler obtained an absolutely vital strategic asset that made it possible for Hitler to become Hitler.

May I draw some historic parallels. When Saddam Hussein took Kuwait, he was taking a small, defenseless country that had enormous revenues and that was strategically located. If he had been allowed to keep them Saddam Hussein might very well have been on his road toward becoming Hitler. However, the President of the United States at the time, the first President Bush, was not Neville Chamberlain. The first President Bush stood in the House of Representatives and told a joint session of this Congress: This shall not stand.

There were those in this Chamber who opposed the first President Bush in his decision to confront Saddam Hussein. Indeed, there were those who, in their own words, said much the same as Chamberlain: What do we have to do with these people so far away? Why should we be concerned with something so far from our shores?

Fortunately, the majority of the Members of this Chamber at the time supported the first President Bush in that decision and, if I may, denied Saddam Hussein Kuwait in a way that Neville Chamberlain failed to deny Hitler Czechoslovakia.

In the aftermath of that first denial of Saddam Hussein's ambitions, inspectors went into Iraq and discovered Saddam Hussein had a serious program of producing weapons of mass destruction. About that there can be no doubt. Let us understand that. Let me underscore it one more time. Saddam Hussein was engaged in a serious program of producing weapons of mass destruction, and about that there can be no doubt. President Clinton affirmed that to the Congress. Madeleine Albright affirmed that to the Congress. The United Nations affirmed that to the Security Council in the form of not one but a dozen resolutions.

Saddam Hussein, left unchecked in his first invasion of Kuwait, was on his way to becoming Hitler. It was the first President Bush who made the decision to stop it.

There is some uncertainty as to what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program after those inspectors were removed from Iraq in 1998. President Clinton believed the program was ongoing; Secretary Albright believed the program was ongoing; Prime Minister Blair of Great Britain believed the program was ongoing; and Inspector Kay, who has been there, confirmed that the program was ongoing. However, we have been unable to find caches of the weapons.

There are those who say: Well, since we can't find huge caches of weapons of mass destruction, the fact that the program was ongoing is immaterial; and, once again, when we went into Iraq the second time with the second President Bush, he did not represent a threat to us--he was not Hitler.

Again, history says if previous leaders had had the resolve of the two Presidents Bush, Hitler would never have become Hitler himself.

One of the things we have discovered in Iraq that says Saddam Hussein was, indeed, very much like Hitler is the mass graves. Estimates of those numbers of Iraqis who have ended up in mass graves have run as high as 500,000. Maybe there are still some to be discovered. There were efforts to hide those graves, just as Hitler made efforts to hide his concentration camps that became the instrument through which he sought the final solution to the Jewish problem.

His final solution, of course, was to eradicate them all, to send them to gas chambers, and then to bulldoze over the graves and pretend they had never been there. Saddam Hussein was doing the same thing in his own country to his own people, and we stopped it. By virtue of the resolve of the second President Bush, we stopped it. We stopped Saddam Hussein from reaching the kind of statistical plateau of horror that Adolf Hitler made famous in the world.

Am I sorry we stopped it? Do I now have to hang my head in shame when I meet my constituents who say the inspectors didn't find what you thought they would find and, therefore, you made a mistake in voting for this war?

Quite the contrary. As I examine the history of this situation, I am filled with gratitude for the first President Bush who prevented Saddam Hussein from taking over Kuwait and perhaps invading Saudi Arabia and thus becoming Hitler. And I am grateful and proud of the fact that I stood with the second President Bush, who moved into Iraq to make sure the weapons program we all know was going on did not reach the point where it could produce huge caches of weapons and that the slaughter, the systematic destruction of the Iraqi people who disagreed with Saddam Hussein, has been stopped. Are those consequences of which Americans should be ashamed? Are those consequences from which we should back away?

I believe, with Tony Blair, that history will look upon this action and say we did the right thing. We all were in the Chamber when he made the point that if we were wrong in assuming that the weapons of mass destruction were there in great numbers, the consequences of our actions, at being wrong, were the elimination of a brutal tyrant and the freeing of 20 million people and the possibility of stability in that region. He said history will forgive that error.

But, he said, if our critics were wrong, and the program, which we know was in place and which has been confirmed to have been in place by Inspector Kay, had gone forward and produced those weapons, Saddam Hussein would have become Hitler and history would never forgive that mistake.

I go back to Munich. At the time when Neville Chamberlain came back to Great Britain, polls were overwhelmingly in his favor. He was greeted with cheers everywhere he went. The one man in the House of Commons who stood up and said ``we have suffered a defeat of the first magnitude,'' whose name was Winston Churchill, got only a handful of votes in his opposition to Chamberlain. But, as Tony Blair said in our joint session, history has a harsh judgment of the mistake that Neville Chamberlain made. Neville Chamberlain's mistake allowed Hitler to become Hitler. George W. Bush made sure he would not make that same mistake in Iraq and allow Saddam Hussein to become Hitler.

Over the break, during the weekend, the Washington Post addressed this issue in some depth. The Washington Post, as we all know, is a paper that did not endorse George W. Bush for the Presidency and has often, in its editorial pages, been fairly harsh in its criticism. But the Washington Post is also a paper with editorial writers who were in favor of moving ahead in Iraq. Perhaps they had the same historic perspective I have tried to offer this morning, that we had to do something to stop, prior to the time when Saddam Hussein became Hitler, the possibility that he might. That is a doctrine that has now been called ``preemptive war,'' about which everybody complains around the world and says: That is just terrible. We should never establish the precedent of attacking or using military force before the threat is imminent.

Well, Neville Chamberlain would have been well served to have adopted the doctrine back in the 1930s, and the world would have saved millions of deaths if he had.

The Washington Post addressed this in an editorial that ran on Sunday. It went from the top to the bottom of the page in two columns called ``Iraq in Review.'' I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record following my remarks.

It begins:

A reader asks: ``When are you going to admit you were

wrong?'' We've received a

number of such inquiries (not all quite so polite) about our

position on the war in Iraq, particularly from readers who

were disappointed in our prewar stance.

They then go through all of the issues. There are certainly times where they are critical of the administration, critical of the administration in ways with which I might disagree. But they do make the essential points about the issues that are in contention, the essential point about the weapons of mass destruction.

They make the point that I have made here this morning, that Inspector Kay has demonstrated that Saddam Hussein had a program of developing weapons of mass destruction. Even if the caches of weapons have not been found, if the program had been allowed to go forward, the weapons would have come.

They talk about Saddam and al-Qaida. They make the point that while there is no direct link between Saddam and al-Qaida--and they claim the administration exaggerated, by implication, the links--that nonetheless there was a threat from terrorism in Iraq, and they summarize it with this sentence:

When combined with [Saddam Hussein's] continuing pursuit of

weapons of mass destruction, that seemed to pose exactly the

sort of threat that the Bush administration rightly focused

on as part of the war on terrorism.

Then they talk about continuing costs. I have already addressed that this morning in my comment about the revision of the budget figures that says that the resurging economy we now have is going to give us a deficit that is going to be roughly $85 billion less than we were talking about as recently as the time before the break.

In addition to their editorial in which the Washington Post says we still stand by our support of the decision to move ahead in Iraq even though things are not going as we had all hoped, they have five military men talking about the war in op-ed pieces. I will not put those in the Record or read them. My reading of the five is that three of them say we have to stay there and go forward and get it done in roughly the way the administration is asking us to. Two are saying, no, this is a quagmire; we should pull out now and walk away.

How do I summarize my history lesson this morning? History comes in chunks bigger than 2-week periods. History comes in chunks bigger than a news site. The history of the last century and this one tells me the two Presidents Bush, in confronting Saddam Hussein in the way they did--the first in reversing Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and the second one moving in to preserve the lives of Iraqi citizens being slaughtered by a man with Hitlerian impulses, if not full Hitlerian power--acted properly.

I am proud to have supported the second President Bush in his decision to do that. I say this to many who are saying now that it didn't go the way you said it would, so therefore we have to walk away from it: Take a little time to read history and understand that things never go as people propose they will, but ultimately those who make the right decisions, for the right reasons, even if they have to make adjustments--sometimes serious changes in the way they pursue those decisions--are those to whom history gives the banner of having done the right thing.

Exhibit 1

[From the Washington Post, Oct. 12, 2003]

Iraq in Review

A reader asks: ``When are you going to admit you were

wrong?'' We've received a number of such inquiries (not all

quite so polite) about our position on the war in Iraq,

particularly from readers who were disappointed in our prewar

stance. Now they cite several postwar surprises, or

ostensible surprises: the absence of weapons of mass

destruction, the absence of a proven connection between

Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda and the continuing violence in

Iraq. In light of these developments, it's important for

supporters of military intervention to look back and, where

necessary, reevaluate--something the Bush administration so

far has resisted.

We believe that there has been more progress in Iraq than

critics acknowledge, but also that the administration has

made serious mistakes. Before the war, we repeatedly urged

President Bush to plan postwar reconstruction more thoroughly

and to level with Congress and the American people about the

likely costs. We urged him to take the time to draw more

allies to the cause. Shortcomings in both cases have proved

highly damaging, as has the Pentagon's insistence on

monopolizing political control over Iraq.

Yet simply to blame the administration is not a full answer

to our readers. Taking the measure of the administration, of

Congress and of their likely ability to see this through was

a pre-war obligation, one of the factors in calculating risks

and benefits. Moreover, postwar troubles and surprises were

to be expected, even if they could not be precisely foretold.

It's fair to ask now whether those troubles and surprises are

so great as to prove the intervention unwise.

No matter how one answers that question, the critical

judgments now involve future policy. It is essential that the

United States do as much as possible to stabilize Iraq under

a peaceable, representative government. It seems to us that

opponents of the war ought to recognize, as some have, that

this mission could be critical to the fight against terrorism

and to the future of the Middle East. But insisting on doing

the right thing now does not excuse supporters of the war

from reexaming the judgments that led to this point.

Weapons of mass destruction. David Kay's 1,200-member

survey team has reported that Saddam Hussein's nuclear

program was ``rudimentary'' and that no large-scale

production of chemical weapons occurred in recent years. We

believed otherwise before the war, especially as regards

chemical weapons, as did most governments with intelligence

services. We have called on the Bush administration to

account for what increasingly look like failures in the

intelligence agencies' assessment of the Iraqi threat, as

well as misstatements in the public case made for the war.

The importance of this is hard to overstate: At issue is

whether Americans, and the world, can believe U.S.

intelligence on the activities of hostile, dangerous, but

hard-to-penetrate states like Iraq; and whether this

president can be trusted not to distort that intelligence in

pursuit of his own agenda.

But at issue also is whether the war should have been

fought. Don't we no know that Iraq posed no imminent threat

to the United States and that there was thus no need or legal

justification for an invasion? This question turns on the

phrase ``imminent threat,'' which was invoked before the war

by leading opponents of intervention, such as Sen. Carl M.

Levin (D-Mich). The Bush administration conveyed its own

sense of dramatic urgency, and that too is something it

should account for in light of what is now known. But we

argued that the threat from Saddam Hussein was not imminent

but cumulative: He had invaded his neighbors, used chemical

weapons and pursued biological and nuclear arms. He

threatened U.S. interests and security in a vital region and

would continue to do so as long as he was in power. A decade

of diplomacy, U.N. sanctions and no-fly-zone enforcement had

failed to end that threat. Instead the credibility of the

Security Council, along with constraints on the regime, had

steadily eroded.

The debate over intervention was fraught precisely because

many people understood that Saddam Hussein was not an

imminent danger. We argued nonetheless that the real risk lay

in allowing him to defy repeated U.N. disarmament orders,

including Resolution 1441, the ``final opportunity'' approved

by unanimous Security Council vote.

Though it pokes holes in U.S. intelligence and our

assumptions, Mr. Kay's report contains much to substantiate

this reasoning. Saddam Hussein, the report claims, never

abandoned his intention to produce biological, chemical and

nuclear arms--and he was aggressively defying Resolution

1441. He also was successfully deceiving U.N. inspectors.

They failed to discover multiple programs for developing

illegal long-range missiles as well as a clandestine network

of biological laboratories, among other things. From a legal

standpoint, the report shows that Iraq should have been

subject to the ``serious consequences'' specified by

Resolution 1441 in the event of noncompliance. More

important, it strongly suggests that in the absence of

intervention Iraq eventually would have shaken off the U.N.

inspectors and sanctions, allowing Saddam Hussein to

follow through on his intentions. He would have been able

to renew his attempt to dominate the region and its oil

supplies, while deterring the United States with the

threat of missiles topped with biological warheads. In

acting to enforce the U.N. resolution, the United States

eliminated a real, if not ``imminent,'' threat, while

ensuring that future Security Council ultimatums carry

some weight.

Saddam and al Qaeda. Mr. Bush and other administration

officials, particularly Vice President Cheney, exaggerated

the connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda and

implied without foundation that Saddam Hussein may have had

something to do with the attacks of 9/11. Critics add that

since the invasion, terrorists seem to have flocked to Iraq,

where the occupation has had to cope with a series of car and

suicide bombings. The terrorism is worrisome, though the

principal group behind it appears to be Ansar al-Islam, which

was based in northern Iraq before the war and whose leader

spent time in Saddam Hussein's Baghdad.

For our part, we never saw a connection between Iraq and 9/

11 or major collaboration between Saddam and al Qaeda. But we

did perceive a broader threat, in the sense that Saddam

Hussein had frequently collaborated with other terrorist

organizations and could be reasonably expected to continue

doing so.

When combined with his continuing pursuit of weapons of mass

destruction, that seemed to pose exactly the sort of threat

that the Bush administration rightly focused on as part of

the war on terrorism.

Continuing costs. The difficulty of rebuilding Iraq is

huge. The steady stream of U.S. dead and wounded is

agonizing. The strain on the U.S. military, its reserves and

the families at home is growing. But these developments,

while troubling, are not altogether surprising--except maybe

to those who believed the Bush administration's shallow

prewar rhetoric. The calculation on intervention required a

weighing of risks: the risk of allowing Saddam Hussein to

remain in power, defying U.N. demands, versus all the well-

articulated risks of intervention. Before the war, these were

frequently said to include starvation, an outpouring of

refugees, a fracturing of Iraq, a descent into ethnic

conflict or simple chaos. We believed that reconstruction

would be long, costly and risky, and we judged nonetheless

that intervention would be less risky than allowing Saddam

Hussein to remain in power.

Were we wrong? The honest answer is: We don't yet know. But

at this stage we continue to believe that the war was

justified and necessary, and that the gains so far have

outweighed the costs. Each of the 326 American servicemen and

women who have died in Iraq represents an irretrievable loss

for family and friends. But the nation already has reaped

great benefit from their sacrifice. One of the most

aggressive and brutal dictators in the history of the Middle

East has been eliminated, along with his proven programs to

acquire deadly weapons. Millions of Iraqis have been freed

from fear, and an opportunity has opened to bring much-needed

political change to a region that is the source of the

greatest security threats to the United States. Polls show a

sometimes grateful, sometimes grudging willingness by most

Iraqis to go along with U.S. plans for reconstruction.

Many Americans understandably have been surprised by the

continuing casualties months after the president's appearance

on an aircraft carrier under the banner ``Mission

Accomplished.'' Mr. Bush's abrupt submission last month of a

large and poorly explained spending request to Congress also

has strengthened public support for the idea that the Iraq

mission must be failing. Yet the president's missteps have

merely obscured the facts that these costs were inevitable,

and that outside of the Sunni towns where support for Saddam

Hussein was strongest, there is no quagmire--only a slow,

slogging progress forward.

Continued progress is far from guaranteed. In our view, the

administration could improve the odds of success by forging a

broader international coalition. For that to happen, the

administration must drop its insistence on monopolizing power

over Iraq's political transition, as well as the contracts

for reconstruction. It must compromise with those well-

meaning allies who want Iraq to succeed but disagree with

U.S. tactics.

Success or failure in the effort to stabilize Iraq under a

reasonably representative government that poses no threat to

the world will provide the ultimate answer to the question of

whether the war should have been undertaken. Because we

continue to believe that U.S. security is at stake, we also

believe that the United States must be prepared to dedicate

troops and financial resources to that goal until it is

achieved, even if it takes years. In our judgment success is

possible, but much will depend on whether the administration

and Congress face the magnitude of the challenge and summon

the political courage and diplomatic skills necessary to meet

it.

On behalf of the Senator from Texas, Mrs. Hutchison, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. President, one of the anecdotes about politics I enjoy the most and that I think is most illustrative of some of the situation that is going on now with respect to Iraq relates to the late Pauline Kael. She was the movie editor for the New Yorker magazine. In 1972, when Richard Nixon won an overwhelming and historic victory in the Presidential election, carrying every single State except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, Pauline Kael was terribly surprised. She said when commenting on this: Nixon can't possibly have won. I don't know a single person who voted for him.

There might be some who will say that speaks well of her circle of friends, but it demonstrates that she lived in a very tight intellectual circle and had no real contact with what was happening in the country as a whole.

I cite that because I think that is what is happening with respect to reporting in Iraq right now. I had an experience over the weekend which I will share briefly before I yield the remainder of our morning business time to the Senator from Texas.

An old friend from Utah and his wife came to Washington on a tourist visit, and I took them around to the various monuments. This man and his wife expressed great concern about Iraq. The wife said: We have real problems in

Iraq. I said: Yes, we do. Tell me what they are, from your perspective.

She said: People are dying all the time, and we are making no progress whatsoever, and we have no plan of making progress. We are in real trouble in Iraq. I said to her: Let me ask you a few things. I said: Are you aware of the fact that about 90 percent of the country is peaceful and that the attacks on Americans are taking place only in what is known as the Sunni Triangle, which goes from Baghdad to Tikrit, and that outside of the Sunni Triangle Americans are not being attacked and killed? She said: No, I didn't know that.

I said: Which country do you think is providing the most troops other than America to help fight for security in Iraq? She said: I guess it is the British. I said: No, it is not the British. Not the British? Is there another country that has more troops in Iraq fighting for Iraq besides the British? I said: Yes. It is the Iraqis. She said: What do you mean? Why, there are close to 50,000 Iraqis under arms providing security support for Americans. She said: I didn't know that.

I said: How many schools do you think have been reopened since the war? She said: I assume probably none. I said: No. I said: 90 percent of the schools and hospitals are now operating. She said: I didn't know.

I will not prolong the time because the Senator from Texas wishes to speak. But the point is that we have in the American press today a lot of Pauline Kaels, someone who said, I don't know a single person who voted for Richard Nixon, in the face of the most historic landslide we had with Richard Nixon. We have press people who are telling us what is going on in Iraq who don't know anybody who has anything good to say about what is going on in Iraq.

I have said before and I will conclude with this: During the height of hostilities in Iraq, to watch television, it was clear we were losing the war on CNN. But, fortunately, we won it on Fox. Ultimately, the fact that we won came through even to the CNN executives.

I think the good things that are happening in Iraq will eventually come through, even to the people at CNN and the New York Times and some of the other places that are living in a Pauline Kael world.

I yield the remainder of our morning business time to the Senator from Texas.

Will the Senator yield?

I am listening with great interest. I agree with much of what the Senator said, but before the Senator from Massachusetts gives a major speech I would like the opportunity to engage in a colloquy.

I would ask the Senator to make his point and then I would appreciate it if we could do that.

I thank the Senator from Delaware not only for his courtesy and friendship, which is reciprocated and, as he has said on the Senate floor, is genuine and real, but I thank him for the clear manner in which he has described this whole situation. I agree absolutely with the overall conclusion that he has come to with respect to loans versus grants. I am running this year, and I am going to have to defend the grant situation, but I am perfectly willing to do so for all the reasons which the Senator from Delaware has outlined.

But there are a few comments I would like to make in the spirit of our friendship and the seriousness with which the Senator from Delaware has approached this issue--at random. The Senator from Delaware is often at random so he can understand.

The references to the Marshall plan and the difference between World War I and World War II are accurate, but I would like to just add one factoid.

I agree with the Senator we have overworked it and I want to back away from it with this fact. The country that received the most money in the Marshall plan was Great Britain. It was not rebuilding destroyed countries, destroyed by virtue of our actions in the war. It was rebuilding Europe that was exhausted by the struggle that really began in the First World War and never ended. I think that is the appropriate analogy here.

I do not view Iraq as a defeated nation. I view Iraq as a victorious nation that has won a struggle of almost four decades in length with our help.

The Senator used the phrase ``defeated nation.'' I think it is, in fact, a victorious nation but an exhausted one by virtue of the 40-year struggle. The grant we are talking about here is essential to come back from that 40-year experience.

The second random point: I listened to the Senator's comments about the deficit. All I know, both before I came here and in the relatively brief period of time I have been here, is that no matter what figure we use with respect to the deficit in the future, it is wrong. I don't know whether it is too high, and I don't know whether it is too low, but I do know one thing for sure, it is wrong.

No. No. I will not because the deficit is a function of the vitality of the economy. If the economy is stronger than the computers at CBO are currently saying it is, the deficit could disappear and we could have the whole $87 billion.

I am not saying that we will because I don't know.

I think the possibility is extremely, extremely small.

I do, however, know that over 50 percent of the shortfall in the projected surplus that we were talking about at the time we started, in 2001, is due not to the tax cut and not to increased spending but to the downturn in the economy. If the economy should come back to be as strong as it was before--and there are signs that it is recovering nicely now--that 50 percent could be recovered.

So, no, I agree that we will not remove the deficit, but I think it is an inaccurate statement to say it will be exactly the $87 billion.

We do that around here and it frustrates me as a former businessman. It frustrates me as a legislator. We are constantly taking the latest numbers from CBO and assuming that they are cast in stone. Then 3 months later, when we get the next set of numbers that completely contradict the earlier ones, we say: Oh, these are the true numbers, and we go on and on. I am not arguing with the Senator's general direction, but I wanted to be a little careful in the specificity with which he outlines this.

Let me get to the heart of the issue that I have with the proposal the Senator is making. I hope I can do this without being too arcane, and I hope I can do it quickly because I recognize I am on the Senator's time and I again thank him for his courtesy.

I thank the Senator. I think his experience at his cocktail party is one that would be repeated by every one of us if we were to gather people of that kind of income in any one of our States. So why don't we all join with the Senator from Delaware? Why am I not saying I agree with him?

If I may illustrate the reasons with a personal example, not all of the tax returns that are filed and that are in the statistical sample the Senator described represent income to individuals. I do not know the current number. I would have looked it up if I had known I was going to get in this exchange. But other numbers have said 75 percent, 80 percent, or some very high figure of percentage of those tax returns that show $400,000 in gross income are, in fact, not income to the individual. Let me give you my personal example to illustrate this.

Before I came to the Senate, I was CEO of a company that was an S corporation. S corporations as opposed to C corporations are exactly the same thing except for the way they are taxed. The ``S'' refers to that section of the Tax Code that is appropriate and ``C'' refers to that section of the Tax Code that is appropriate. In an S corporation, the earnings of the company flow through to the shareholders and are reported on the shareholders' personal tax returns. Therefore, they show up as income to the individual.

I will again use myself as the example. I was the CEO of this company. I was earning $140,000 a year as the CEO of the company. The company started to do really very well. It was growing very rapidly. Sales were more than doubling every year. We were bringing on new people. We were building new buildings. We needed every dime of capital we could put our hands on. Fortunately for us, we were doing this during what the New York Times called ``The Decade of Greed;'' that is, when the top marginal tax rate was 28 percent.

By putting the income of the company on my personal tax return and those of the other shareholders, the company was paying an effective rate of 28 percent which meant we got to keep 72 cents out of every dollar we earned to finance the growth of that company. We created that company with internally generated funds. We didn't do it by going to the stock market. We didn't do it by going to the banks. Of course, we had a line of credit at the bank. But it was not part of our capital. That meant one of the last years before I left the company and decided to run for the Senate, my compensation from the company was $140,000.

Let us go through these numbers.

My compensation from the company was $140,000. My share of the company's profits which was reported on my 1040 was $1 million. As far as the IRS was concerned, I was a very rich man who was earning $1.14 million a year. All I got was $140,000. The rest of it, while reported on my tax return, was kept in the company to pay for the growth of the company.

I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Of course. The net amount I reported after the deductions was $1 million. So as far as the IRS was concerned, my income was $1.14 million. Under the Tax Code, the deductions to which the Senator from Delaware referred that go to people in these categories were all wiped out by the $1 million. All of my credits, all of my deductions--everything was wiped out.

If we were to take the numbers the Senator from Delaware was talking about, and say, OK, you have someone with a $400,000 gross income, and that means his after-tax income is $312,000 because of the standard deduction, if he has a chunk of 401-K income on this from either an S corporation or an LLC corporation, or a partnership, all of those standard deductions go away very quickly as the number goes up.

The point of this is not to argue one way or the other about how the tax structure is; it is to say the Senator is inadvertently targeting a large number of small businesses where profits and growth money are being reported on individual returns rather than through corporate returns. The S corporations were made substantially worse after the Reagan years because of the summit at Andrews Air Force Base, and then what was done with the Clinton tax increases.

There are not as many people using the S corporations as there used to be because the advantage is not as great. But there is a still a very substantial amount of small business income that will be hit by the Senator's amendment. We are not just talking about Donald Trump and Jennifer Lopez. We are not talking about Michael Jordan. We are talking about people who are building businesses for whom $400,000 a year for the income of the business is a demonstration of a struggle. It is not a demonstration of the kind of opulence you find at the Delaware country club. It is survival. We didn't get to the point with the business I have described where we felt comfortable in cash flow until our earnings were well into the $10 million, $12 million, or $15 million area because of the demand for capital.

I would be happy to.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that a vote in relation to the pending Biden amendment occur at 3:15 p.m. today with no amendment in order to the amendment prior to the vote, provided the debate before the vote be 30 minutes under the control of the Republican side and the remaining time under the Democratic leader or his designee.

Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Uintah Research and Curatorial Center Act. This bill would authorize the National Park Service, NPS, to construct a research and curatorial facility for Dinosaur National Monument and its partner, the Utah Field House of Natural History Museum (Museum), in Vernal, UT. The facility would be co-located with the Museum while helping to preserve, protect, and exhibit the vast treasures of one of the most productive sites of dinosaur bones in the world.

Since the first discovery of Jurassic era bones by the paleontologist Earl Douglass in 1909, and the subsequent proclamation as a national monument in 1915 by President Woodrow Wilson, the Dinosaur National Monument has been a haven for both amateur and expert dinosaur enthusiasts. At present, Dinosaur National Monument has more than 600,000 items in its museum collection. Unfortunately, these items are currently stored in 17 different facilities throughout the park. Many of these resources are at risk due to the failure of the scattered facilities to meet minimum National Park Service storage standards. A new research and curatorial facility is greatly needed to bring the park's collections up to standard and to ensure its protection.

The curatorial facility will also fill a critical role as a collection center for the park and partners' fossil, archaeological, natural resource operations and collections, and park archives. Moreover, in these days of limited budgets, the decision to co-locate this facility with the State's museum will also save taxpayer dollars. The State of Utah is nearing completion of their new Field House Museum at a cost to the State of $6.5 million dollars. Because of the co- location, NPS staff, visiting scholars, interns and volunteers would have access to the State museum's space for exhibit, classroom, conferencing, education, restrooms, public access, parking, and other needs not included in the curatorial facility.

The 22,500 square foot facility will be built outside the boundaries of the park on land donated to the Park Service by the City of Vernal and Uintah County. The legislation will also permit the Park Service to accept the donation of the land, valued at approximately $1.5 million dollars. The Park Service estimates the total cost of adding the research and curatorial center to be $8.7 million dollars.

Other Federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, who are also in need of collections storage, have become minor partners and would utilize a small portion of the storage facility. An additional partner in the project, the Intermountain Natural History Association, has agreed to fund and carry out the soil and environmental testing necessary to permit the Park Service to accept the donation.

It is imperative that we care for these paleontological resources and ensure their availability to future generations, both for scientific study and the enjoyment of the public. This legislation is a proactive approach to accomplishing those objectives and is an excellent example of a cost effective partnership between the National Park Service, the State of Utah Department of Natural Resources, the City of Vernal, and Uintah County of which this Congress ought to applaud and support.

Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Uintah Research and Curatorial Center Act. This bill would authorize the National Park Service, NPS, to construct a research and curatorial facility for Dinosaur National Monument and its partner, the Utah Field House of Natural History Museum (Museum), in Vernal, UT. The facility would be co-located with the Museum while helping to preserve, protect, and exhibit the vast treasures of one of the most productive sites of dinosaur bones in the world.

Since the first discovery of Jurassic era bones by the paleontologist Earl Douglass in 1909, and the subsequent proclamation as a national monument in 1915 by President Woodrow Wilson, the Dinosaur National Monument has been a haven for both amateur and expert dinosaur enthusiasts. At present, Dinosaur National Monument has more than 600,000 items in its museum collection. Unfortunately, these items are currently stored in 17 different facilities throughout the park. Many of these resources are at risk due to the failure of the scattered facilities to meet minimum National Park Service storage standards. A new research and curatorial facility is greatly needed to bring the park's collections up to standard and to ensure its protection.

The curatorial facility will also fill a critical role as a collection center for the park and partners' fossil, archaeological, natural resource operations and collections, and park archives. Moreover, in these days of limited budgets, the decision to co-locate this facility with the State's museum will also save taxpayer dollars. The State of Utah is nearing completion of their new Field House Museum at a cost to the State of $6.5 million dollars. Because of the co- location, NPS staff, visiting scholars, interns and volunteers would have access to the State museum's space for exhibit, classroom, conferencing, education, restrooms, public access, parking, and other needs not included in the curatorial facility.

The 22,500 square foot facility will be built outside the boundaries of the park on land donated to the Park Service by the City of Vernal and Uintah County. The legislation will also permit the Park Service to accept the donation of the land, valued at approximately $1.5 million dollars. The Park Service estimates the total cost of adding the research and curatorial center to be $8.7 million dollars.

Other Federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, who are also in need of collections storage, have become minor partners and would utilize a small portion of the storage facility. An additional partner in the project, the Intermountain Natural History Association, has agreed to fund and carry out the soil and environmental testing necessary to permit the Park Service to accept the donation.

It is imperative that we care for these paleontological resources and ensure their availability to future generations, both for scientific study and the enjoyment of the public. This legislation is a proactive approach to accomplishing those objectives and is an excellent example of a cost effective partnership between the National Park Service, the State of Utah Department of Natural Resources, the City of Vernal, and Uintah County of which this Congress ought to applaud and support.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I had planned to come to the floor at this hour and discuss the issue of vouchers for the District of Columbia. I will still go back to that topic. However, having listened to my friend from Massachusetts and the comments he has made about Iraq, I will divert from the discussion of vouchers for long enough to make a few points with respect to the situation in Iraq.

I will go back to my first experience with respect to the issue of terrorism. It happened shortly after I was elected. It was back in the early 1990s. I was elected in 1992, and I took office in 1993.

One of my staffers who has foreign policy experience said to me: There are some people you ought to meet.

I said: Fine. What is the subject?

He said: Well, there is something you ought to understand, and these people will come in and brief you on it. I can't sit in on the meeting because my security clearance has expired, and I am not cleared at a high enough level to be present when they brief you. But I think you, as a U.S. Senator, should hear this briefing and understand what it is they have to say.

So not really understanding what was going to happen, I had this briefing take place in my office. Two officers from the CIA came in and sat down with me and talked about the attack on the World Trade Center that occurred in 1993. As they outlined the forces behind that attack, they gave me my first glimpse of international terrorism. I won't go through the details of what they said other than this particular comment. They said: From our point of view, harsh as it may sound, the main thing wrong with the attack on the World Trade Center is that it did not kill more people.

I said: That is a very harsh judgment. What do you mean by that?

They said: Because it killed only six people and the physical damage was cleared up in a relatively short period of time, the American people have been lulled into a false sense of security that they are not at risk.

Then they outlined the full description of international terrorism, where it was, how it operated, and what its goals were. We talked about the religious aspect. We talked about the ideological aspect. I remember saying, as they described the way it was organized: Let me see if I understand exactly what you are telling me. As I understand it, this is basically a church

without a pope; that is, there is no hierarchical structure with a single individual or group of individuals at the top calling the shots all the way down. Instead, it is a series of cells of people who have the same ideological fervor but report to no one. They coordinate but they are not controlled.

These two briefers said: Yes, Senator, you have that about right.

Now, we know there was a center for training for indoctrination and for finance. It was run by Osama bin Laden, and it had as its headquarters, physically, the training camps in Afghanistan. But that does not mean Osama bin Laden or any other central group controlled or coordinated everything that was done worldwide. These are freelancing people, in many respects on their own. They would send people to Afghanistan to be trained and indoctrinated. They would contact Osama bin Laden for funds. But they would develop their own operations and their own initiatives of how they would attack Americans. And this early briefing made it very clear to me that their target was, in fact, Americans. It has always been fashionable to think the primary target for people in the Middle East is Israelis. No, the primary target is Americans. Israelis are seen as surrogates for Americans, but the primary target is Americans.

The concern is that the Americans somehow have entered that portion of the world where these people have previously been dominant, and the Americans have contaminated that world with American ideas. The ideas that are so repugnant are the ideas of freedom, the ideas of equality for women, the ideas of education for children in secular ways to teach them skills so that they can survive in the modern world rather than education that is concentrated entirely on indoctrination of ideas that go back centuries if not millennia.

I came out of that first briefing very disturbed. I tried to ask those who came to brief me if they could give me any timetable. They said: No, we don't know when this will erupt. No one does. But it is there. It is growing. It is powerful. We are the target.

They also said--I remember very clearly--that the primary challenge to Americans would be in chemical and biological weapons. This was before the attempt was made to put a chemical agent into the subway in Tokyo and raised the specter of that kind of thing being done in America.

Well, the years went by. Nothing happened. I tended to forget that briefing and put it aside. I focused, as many in this Chamber know, on the issue of cyber-terrorism and attacks through computers. I held a hearing where I asked the CIA witness who appeared before us: Isn't it likely that the next attack on this country will come in the form of a computer attack because you could do more damage to the economy if you could shut down the computers than any other way?

The CIA witness said: No, Senator, I don't think that is true. It is true that you could do more damage to the economy with computers, but I don't think that is where the attack will come from. The terrorists want something dramatic that will show on television around the world. Television pictures of computers not working just won't cut it for that purpose.

That hearing was held less than 60 days before September 11, 2001, when we saw that particular prophecy--they want something dramatic on television--fulfilled enormously.

What does that have to do with the issues raised by the Senator from Massachusetts as he is complaining that there is no plan in Iraq? He is complaining that the reservists are going to be held too long in Iraq, that we have not leveled with the world, that we don't have enough allies in Iraq, that everything is going terribly wrong in Iraq. It has everything to do with what the Senator from Massachusetts was talking about because the Senator from Massachusetts--and others like him who have chosen to focus on difficulties that America is having in Iraq-- has turned his gaze away from the overall challenge of terrorism in the world.

That which I was told in that first briefing is still true. The primary target of terrorists throughout the world is Americans. The primary purpose of terrorism around the world is to drive America out of the Middle East. And the lesson that those terrorists have learned from America's activities since the Vietnam war says that if they just keep chipping away at our resolve, if they just keep bloodying our nose a little bit, Americans will tire, Americans will decide to pull back, and Americans will withdraw. That happened in Somalia. That happened when the first al-Qaida attacks occurred against American Embassies. That happened after the attack on the USS Cole.

We protested; we made a brief military gesture, and then, afraid of American casualties, afraid of what public opinion might say in America, we pulled back. Thus emboldened by that kind of history and particularly encouraged by the rhetoric in the United Nations, the terrorist groups are convinced that if they can just hang on in Iraq long enough to cause us to lose resolve at home, we will withdraw our troops from Iraq, we will say it wasn't worth it, we will say, yes, there was some faulty intelligence, and therefore we must correct that by withdrawing altogether, and then we turn not only Iraq but ultimately the entire Middle East over to the terrorists. If we think we have a lot of problems with terrorists now, just wait until they are encouraged by America's lack of resolve.

Of course, things are not going well in Iraq, according to the rosiest of scenarios. They never do in wartime. Think back to the other wars America has fought--more traditional wars to be true, but nonetheless wars that were for our survival. Did the Second World War start out with a series of American victories? Did the Second World War start out with a series of American bungles because we didn't have an adequate plan to deal with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor? There was a great deal of second-guessing about Pearl Harbor. Franklin Roosevelt was heavily criticized for not having known Pearl Harbor was coming, and some even suggested the conspiratorial theory that he looked the other way in order to provoke a Pearl Harbor. I don't believe that for a second, but that was a part of the political rhetoric of the time. We did not, as a nation, respond to that rhetoric. Instead, we said: Let the books about what may or may not have been done be written later; let us concentrate now on the task at hand. We refused to be distracted or diverted from the task at hand.

My primary challenge and my primary problem with the position enunciated by the Senator from Massachusetts is not that he lacks patriotism. There are those who say that by challenging him, I am challenging his patriotism. I don't do that for a moment. It is not that I challenge his motives or his integrity. I don't for a moment. I challenge his focus. He is focusing on everything that might be challenged as not going correctly and perfectly from the beginning, and he is ignoring the big picture. He is ignoring the primary threat that has been with us for decades, finally exploded on our shores on the 11th of September, and has not gone away. And the question must be asked: If we in fact refuse to put up the money for the $87 billion that has been requested, if we refuse to proceed with the effort to establish a stable and free market-oriented economy and government in Iraq, if we refuse to stay the course and pull back now, all in the name of some abstract sense of balance because the intelligence might not have been perfect, what will be the result?

If we lose focus on the war on terrorism, the terrorists will win. If we decide that short-term political advantage is more important than long-term success, the terrorists will win. It has been said--perhaps it is a cliche, but it is very true--that America is better off fighting terrorists in the streets of Baghdad--yes, even if soldiers die--than we would be fighting them in the streets of Detroit or New Orleans or San Francisco.

One of the reasons we have not had successive events to the bombing of the World Trade Center with airplanes and the attack on the Pentagon since September 11, 2001, is that we have been focusing on destroying the terrorist infrastructure, hunting down their leaders, and disrupting their financial networks. We came to the conclusion that one of the key factors in doing all of those things was an attack on Iraq. Oh, some say, you cannot prove any connection between the people who flew

into the World Trade Center and Saddam Hussein and, therefore, you made a mistake in going into Iraq.

Is there anyone looking at the results of what happened after we went into Iraq who would say the Iraqi people would be better off if we had not done it? Two-thirds of the Iraqis are saying over and over again in various polls and surveys that are done that their lives are better now than before the Americans came in.

Those who say the intelligence was faulty should look at all aspects of the intelligence we didn't have. I will acknowledge that there were many things we did not know until we got on the ground and perhaps the intelligence people should have told us. One of those, about which we hear nothing from the Senator from Massachusetts and others who hold his same position, is that we did not know there was a holocaust going on in Iraq that, percentagewise, was almost as great as the one that went on in Nazi Germany.

Tom Korologos, a friend to many of us in this Chamber, is now serving in Iraq. He takes the congressional delegations that go there to visit the mass graves. He said that is the first place they go, and it gets very quiet very quickly.

We didn't know Saddam Hussein was systematically murdering, torturing, and burying his people in tremendous numbers. The intelligence didn't tell us that. If we had known that, would it have said to us, stay out? If we had had the correct intelligence, would we have said, oh, we cannot go in there if that is going on? There are those who criticized Franklin Roosevelt for not focusing on the Holocaust during the Second World War and not doing more to prevent it. If we had known that, I believe it would have made us go in more quickly and more powerfully than we did. Now we know.

There are those who say we have no plan for the reconstruction of Iraq. Look at how badly it is going. Look at the number of people who are without power and water, and look at all of the damage that was done. Then we realize from the reports on the ground that the lack of power, the lack of water, and the lack of services in Iraq was because of Saddam Hussein, not because of anything the American bombs did. Many Iraqis are saying they have more food, more power, and more water now than they did before the Americans came. But you didn't hear that on this floor from people who are complaining that we have not solved all of the problems in the time we have been there.

Mr. President, as I say, I did not come prepared to talk about that. I have more I want to say on that in a more prepared fashion. I will do that later in the week when we get into the actual debate over the $87 billion supplemental.

The point I want to make--and I will make it again--is that the true story of what is really happening in Iraq is not being told to the American people. That is primarily because those in control of the media, for whatever reason, are not anxious to tell that story. Maybe they consider it as not news. Maybe they consider it will not get as many viewers to show the progress that is being made in Iraq, as compared to what they are showing now, which are the difficulties that are being created in Iraq. I will talk about that also later in the week.

I believe that when the truth comes out, when everything that is really happening in Iraq is truly known, the American people will discover this is an effort of which we can be enormously proud. This is an effort of America at its best. We have not gone into Iraq for territory; we have not gone into Iraq for economic advantage; we have gone into Iraq for the highest possible humanitarian motives, and with all of the difficulties and all of the problems, and all of the guerrilla attacks, we are daily increasing our ability to fulfill those humanitarian motives.

Let me close with this final comment. I was in this Chamber when the proposal was made that America invade Haiti. I was opposed to that. I voted against it. But we were told it was our duty to invade Haiti, not because there was an imminent threat from Haiti, not because Haiti was developing any weapons of mass destruction, not because Haiti was harboring terrorists, not because Haiti was financing terrorists, all of which applied to Iraq. No, we were told we had to invade Haiti because there was an illegitimate President in charge; that that alone was sufficient reason for American military power to be applied to the situation in Haiti. Obviously, there was no military challenge worthy of the name awaiting us in Haiti. That was an easy decision to make in terms of a military activity.

Colin Powell, then a private citizen, along with former President Jimmy Carter and Senator Sam Nunn, went to Haiti in advance of the invasion and essentially talked the Haiti regime into abandoning their posts and leaving peacefully. Sam Nunn reported to those of us in the Senate after that experience what went on, and basically the individual who convinced the Haitian leadership to give up without a fight was Colin Powell. He sat down with the leader of the Haitian armed forces and convinced him that military chivalry did not require that he die at his post; that he had a responsibility to his troops and if there was, in fact, a shootout with the American military, his troops would be destroyed for no good purpose. The man, responding as one military man to another, agreed with Colin Powell and left the country.

We can look back on that event and discover the following: We replaced a brutal dictator, much beloved of American conservatives, with a man who had the claim of being the legitimately elected President. So technically we replaced a usurper with a President who was legitimate.

I remember raising the question on the floor of what would happen if we put this man in charge because his past history suggested that he would become just as brutal a dictator. Oh, no, I was told, no, because the Haitian Constitution does not allow him to run for a second term. We will put him back in power with the military might of America behind him. He will serve out the balance of his term, and then he will step aside because he is a democrat who responds appropriately to democratic institutions and his constitution says he cannot serve a second term. You need not be concerned that he will seize power in a way that will be dictatorial and brutal to his people, Senator Bennett, because the Haitian Constitution forbids it.

The Haitian economy was in terrible shape at the time the American military invaded Haiti, and we were told: We will have to do something about that; we will have to rebuild Haiti, so we will turn that responsibility over to the United Nations.

Now, not quite a decade later, looking at Haiti, what do we find? Yes, we replaced a brutal dictator who was much beloved of American conservatives, with a brutal dictator who is much beloved of American liberals, and he is still there, the Haitian Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding. He is going to be dictator for life, as long as he can maintain his military power.

How has the United Nations done in rebuilding Haiti? How has the United Nations fared in bringing democracy and prosperity to Haiti? The average Haitian at best is no worse off than he was prior to the American invasion. And at worst he is considerably worse off economically. The island's economy has continued to deteriorate. Brutality, government murder, and assassination has continued to thrive. Nothing is better; a great deal is worse.

I am not suggesting that Iraq is a perfect analogy with Haiti, but I find it interesting that people who are now complaining that we went in to remove a brutal dictator should consider leaving quickly and, thus, open the door to replacement by a brutal dictator and turn the responsibility of seeing that the country is rehabilitated over to the United Nations.

I think the track record demonstrates that the Americans do a better job than the United Nations and, indeed, if the United Nations is to succeed, should we do that in Iraq, the only way they could do it, and Kofi Annan and others realize this, would be to plead with the Americans to provide the security forces, to provide the money, to provide the expertise to see that it happens. If we are going to provide that, we should be in charge of it.

Mr. President, now I return to the subject I came to the Chamber to discuss, and I will do that much more expeditiously than I would have otherwise, having taken that time to respond to the Senator from Massachusetts.

The issue is the question of whether or not we should allow a voucher pilot program to be tested in the District of Columbia. Let me make it very clear the implication of what I have just said: a voucher pilot program to be tested in the District of Columbia. By voting for this pilot program and the funds that would support it, I am not voting for vouchers in Salt Lake City, I am not voting for vouchers in Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, or Los Angeles, and I am not voting for a national voucher system. I am voting for a pilot project to be tested in the District of Columbia.

Once we have tested that pilot project and learn how well it works in the District of Columbia, then we can have the debate of whether or not it belongs in other cities around the country. Then we can have the debate as to whether or not it works.

Right now we hear all kinds of rhetoric about how terribly irresponsible it will be. Do we know? No. Let's test it. We can't just turn the whole school system in the District of Columbia over to private schools. No, we can't. Let's have a pilot program.

A pilot program to be tested in the District of Columbia does not threaten public education across the country, does not threaten the budgets of school boards around the Nation, does not threaten anything except those who are in love with the status quo.

What is the status quo in the school system in the District of Columbia? On a per pupil basis, it is wonderful. On a per pupil basis, more money is spent in the District of Columbia than any other jurisdiction in the United States. That sounds terrific. We are spending more money per pupil to educate kids in the District than anyplace else. We are spending about a third more than the national average, and we are spending about two-thirds more than we spend in my home State of Utah. From a spending per pupil point of view, nothing is wrong with schools in the District.

The only problem is the vast majority of kids who are being educated in those schools are not being educated. The vast majority of the kids on whom that money is being spent are coming out of the system badly shortchanged. They can't read. They can't figure. There are whole gaps in their knowledge of things they don't understand.

There are those who say we are just not supporting them enough; we are just not spending enough money. The late Senator from New York, Pat Moynihan, once said half facetiously, but also to make a point, that if you drew a chart with one line being spending and the other line being accomplishments, you could draw the inference that the more money we spend on education, the worse it becomes because, he said, as the spending line has gone up, the accomplishment line had gone down. He didn't want to suggest there was a cause-and-effect relationship there, and I don't either, but I do think from that chart, particularly with respect to the District of Columbia, we can understand that more money for the present system is not the answer.

The people who are most concerned about the education in the District of Columbia have come forward with a request. By that I mean the Mayor, I mean the president of the school board, and I mean ultimately the people most concerned. The parents of the children have said: Will the Congress please give us the opportunity to do a test of a pilot program in the District of Columbia to see if it works? We in the Congress, in the Appropriations Committee so far, have said: Yes, we will give you the money to test a pilot project in the District of Columbia.

From the rhetoric we heard in the committee and the rhetoric I expect on the floor, one would think we had challenged the entire structure of public education in America from the time of Thomas Jefferson forward. We are not. We simply want to have the money to test a pilot project in the District of Columbia, a pilot project which the leaders of the District of Columbia and the parents in the District of Columbia have asked for. I think it is time we gave them what they asked for.

I am perfectly willing to hold out the possibility that after 3, 4, or 5 years of experience, if we determine that it is a failure, I will vote to cut off all funds for it. I am perfectly willing to stipulate that I don't guarantee in any way that this is a silver bullet that is going to solve all of the problems.

I anticipate that at the end of 4 or 5 years, reading scores are still going to be lousy in the District, mathematics skills are still going to be lousy in the District, but maybe, just maybe they will get a little better as the District schools decide they want to compete with those private schools that are educating the children a little better. I am assuming that will happen.

Yes, but we are only providing this for a small percentage of the students in the District of Columbia, and therefore we are shortchanging the others if it is going to work.

Again, we don't know if it is going to work. We are just providing money for a test of a pilot project in the District of Columbia to see what will happen. I believe, as I say, that it will demonstrate better things and more important things. But I say to those who say you are not doing it for all of the kids, it is like the old story which I first heard from an educator. I know it is almost a cliche now that others have used it, but it is appropriate here, and it is the proper way for me to conclude this presentation.

People are walking along the beach and they are seeing on the sand, away from the ocean, starfish that have been washed ashore by a heavy wave, and the wave has then receded and the starfish are in danger of dying outside of the water.

One of the two picks up a starfish and throws it into the water, and the other says: Why are you wasting your time? Look at all these thousands of starfish that are going to die out here and you can't make a difference. It won't make any difference what you do.

And as the first one threw another starfish back into the ocean he said: It will make a difference to this one.

I suggest that there are many children in the District of Columbia for whom this will make a very significant difference. Just because we can't, here, make a difference for them all, we can at least make a difference for this one, and for that one, and for the next one. Let's have the courage to test a pilot project for the District of Columbia and see what happens.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to proceed for 15 minutes on the Republican time.