Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from Washington will yield just on that point, the last thing this country needs is for our intelligence, our CIA to be politicized, to have decisions made, conclusions reached that are based on political considerations rather than on factual, objective data.

This memo from a newly appointed CIA director, Mr. Goss, is a blatant attempt to politicize our intelligence operations, to politicize the CIA. What that will do is place this country at great risk. Because if we cannot trust the intelligence to be based on actual fact, actual objective data as best we can collect it, but make decisions based on political considerations, then that will put the American people at risk, and it will put our troops at risk.

That is absolutely almost unthinkable, that a newly appointed director of the CIA would be so insensitive and out of touch that he would actually put such a directive into a written memo and have it circulated.

And I yield back to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding to me, and as we stand here and talk this evening, there may be those listening who wonder why are we talking about the past. I think there is a very good reason for us to talk about the past and to remember what has happened, because the very people who are responsible for having made these erroneous decisions in the past are the same people who are in positions of power and even being promoted in the present. That means that they will be in a position to make decisions about the future.

Now, many of the decisions that have been made have been deadly decisions, and lives have been lost as a result of decisions that were based upon false information or distorted or twisted information; quite frankly, I believe information that was purposefully manipulated in such a way as to try to get the support of the American people for carrying out this President's foreign policy.

I just want to share with my colleagues some human consequences of what has happened. About 3 weeks ago, I received nearly 20 letters from various members of a family support group. This family support group consists of family members whose loved ones are part of a transportation reserve unit that has been activated and is now in Iraq. And at the time they wrote me, they told me their loved ones were around the Fallujah area, which is one of the most dangerous places in which to be in Iraq.

The people who wrote me indicated at the time that they wrote that out of this one reserve unit that is headquartered in Cadiz, Ohio, that they had lost three of their loved ones. They have since lost a fourth. So four soldiers have been lost out of that one reserve unit. It is a transportation unit.

The letters told me that they were getting messages from their loved ones, these troops, telling them that they were not being adequately supplied with proper life-saving equipment. They were driving around in vehicles that were not armed, for example. And we know that if you are a member of a transportation unit and you are on patrols and you are delivering supplies and so on, one of the great dangers in Iraq is driving over these explosives that have been placed in the roadways.

So out of this one unit, four have already been lost. And these letters that I received from the loved ones said to me, when we gave our precious soldiers to go fight this war, we trusted our government to provide them with every protection possible. Now they are deeply, deeply disturbed and concerned that their loved ones are not being adequately cared for.

Now, I believe that part of the problem in the execution of this war has been the fact that it was initially based upon these false assumptions and this false information. We were told basically this was going to be a piece of cake; that we were going to be welcomed as heroes; and there was not adequate planning, not adequate preparation. It took the Pentagon, it took this administration, this President, because he is the Commander in Chief, more than a year to be able to say that all of our troops, each of our troops in Iraq was equipped with basic body armor. Now, I think that is absolutely shameful.

I wonder how many of our troops have lost their lives because they were not properly equipped, and how many of our troops right tonight, as we stand here in the Chamber of the people's House, how many of our troops are in danger tonight simply because this administration has failed to properly plan and provide them with adequate materials. There is a consequence to the kind of behavior that we have been describing. There is a consequence when people use false information or distort information or make such unrealistic assumptions, and it is absolutely tragic.

In my congressional district, the Sixth Congressional District in Ohio, we have lost five soldiers, a 20-year-old, a 21-year-old, and three men who were in their late 30s. One of those men left five children ages 3 through 12. We are talking here about real consequences. We are talking about real people, real families. And there are Americans tonight who are worried sick because they have loved ones over there fighting this war, and they are doing the very best they can under very difficult circumstances, and we honor our troops, but that is one of the reasons that we stand here and advocate that they be cared for in a way that is befitting a great Nation.

We should never send one of our soldiers into harm's way without them having proper armor and equipment. And tonight I can say, based on what I have heard from my constituents and some of the soldiers who are currently in the field, we are not doing all that we can to keep them as safe as they can possibly be kept.

I yield back to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. Speaker, I want to reinforce what the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) is saying. It was very obvious this decision and the timetable attached to it was influenced by a political clock. The fact is, we telegraphed to the world and the enemy what we were going to do. We gave them time to prepare, and we waited until a few days after the election and then the decision was made to go in.

That is a troubling thing to conclude. It really troubles me to think that a decision like that that would involve a military operation that was going to likely consume American lives would be in any way influenced by a political clock, but the evidence seems quite clear that is what happened. We had to build up for months and then more intensely in the weeks leading up to the election, and the enemy knew we were coming in. That gave them an opportunity to be ready for us, to have supplies and equipment in place. There was no element of surprise in our going into Fallujah. We basically let them know, as soon as the election was over, it was going to happen. That truly troubles me. I think it should trouble every American.

If the gentleman will yield, just listening to the gentleman, I am reminded of a fact. The fact is this: that the only people sacrificing for this war are the soldiers and the people who love them. The President is not sacrificing for this war. The corporate world is not sacrificing for this war. Those of us who sit in the safety of this Chamber, we are not sacrificing for this war. We do not have sons and daughters and loved ones in Iraq in harm's way.

So who is sacrificing? The taxpayer is not sacrificing for this war, not the current taxpayer, because the President has decided that the cost of this war is just going to be pushed into the future so the children and the children yet to be born will bear the burden for paying for this war. It is a shame that the President is asking nothing of us as a Nation, save the lives and the time, the service of our soldiers and the grief and the worry of the people who love them. It is just almost beyond belief that we find ourselves where we are tonight.

Our country was attacked as a result of Osama bin Laden, the Taliban. We supported going into Afghanistan, obviously, all of us. Out of 535 members of the House and Senate, only one voted against the war in Afghanistan because it was wholly, totally justified and necessary. And then all of a sudden the President and his advisers decided that we were going to go to Iraq. No connection with the attack upon this country. No weapons of mass destruction. No imminent danger to us. Yet we divert resources and intelligence away from Afghanistan, away from the search for Osama bin Laden, and here we find ourselves in Iraq and we all knew that we were going to win the military battle.

There is not a country on the face of this Earth or a combination of countries on the face of this Earth that can stand up to our military and our fighting men and women. We all knew that. And so there is this quick, so-called end of combat, and the President got on the aircraft carrier, there was that sign up there Mission Accomplished, and look what has followed. Thousands of people injured. Well over 1,000 of our soldiers are now dead. Iraq has become a haven for terrorists. They are coming from throughout the world, gathering in Iraq; and we find ourselves bogged down with no plan, continuing death, continuing injuries, continuing expense. And we have got an administration who is wanting to continue to do the same thing they have been doing for the last several months. It is truly alarming, saddening, that our Nation finds itself in this situation tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my strong support for provisions in the Department of Defense conference report which reform the Energy Employees Occupation Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000.

First, I would like to thank my friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the ranking member of the committee, for his leadership. I also would like to say a special thanks to Hugh Brady of the Committee on Armed Services staff, Cindy Blackston of the Committee on the Judiciary staff, and Peter Rutledge of the Committee on Education and the Workforce staff.

In addition, I would like to commend the hard work of the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Whitfield), along with a bipartisan group of Senators, including Senators Bunning, Bingaman, Kennedy, Voinovich, DeWine, Clinton, Cantwell and others.

Despite opposition from the administration, Members in both Chambers rolled up their sleeves and on a bipartisan basis did the hard work and included an amendment in this conference report which makes significant and greatly needed reforms to the Energy Employees Occupation Illness Compensation Program.

Now, in the year 2000, we passed landmark legislation establishing a program to compensate our nuclear workers made sick while toiling in the Nation's atomic weapons factories. For the first time, the Federal Government acknowledged that it placed its cold war veterans in harm's way.

Unfortunately, the Department of Energy has fallen down on the job to run its part of the compensation program. With more than $90 million appropriated to DOE for administering the compensation program, a mere 31 claims of over 25,000 have been paid in the last 4 years. That track record is not acceptable.

The Department of Labor, on the other hand, has successfully processed 95 percent of its more than 55,000 claims.

The amendment included in today's Defense conference report will shift DOE's responsibilities to the Department of Labor, provide for a Federal willing payer, establish guaranteed funding for payment of claims, and create a Federal benefit structure for all of those workers injured and made ill due to the exposure to hazardous materials and toxic substances while working in our nuclear arsenal. We promised to compensate these injured veterans, and now we are fulfilling that promise.

Although I wish we could have passed such an amendment years ago, I am very pleased that today we are doing the right thing and we are honoring a national commitment to assist these veterans of the cold war.

Mr. Speaker, I have a message for America's veterans and the families who love them.

As reported in Sunday's Washington Post, Staff Sergeant Gene Westbrook, 35, of Lawton, Oklahoma, was deployed to Iraq in January as a drill sergeant, sent to train Iraqi Army recruits. While on duty on April 28, south of Sadr City in Baghdad, he was hit by a mortar shell, and the shrapnel severed his spine. He is now paralyzed from the chest down, has limited movement in his right arm and battles constant infections. His wife takes care of him full-time.

``I love the military,'' said Staff Sergeant Westbrook. ``That was my life. But I do not believe they are taking care of me now.''

He has received no disability benefits because his paperwork is missing. He is supporting his wife and three children on his regular military pay of $2,800 a month as he awaits a ruling on whether he will receive $6,500 from the VA for his disability.

At the same time, President Bush's budget for 2005 calls for cutting the Department of Veterans' Affairs staff that handles disability claims. What is the President thinking, cutting the budget for this vital function while our disabled servicemen wait for justice?

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. 1194, the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act. As the sponsor of H.R. 2387, the companion House bill to S. 1194, I am very pleased to have this legislation on the floor, and I would like to thank my colleagues on the Committee on the Judiciary and their staff who have been instrumental in moving this legislation.

S. 1194 was introduced and shepherded through the Senate by Ohio Senator Mike DeWine, and I would like to thank him for his leadership and friendship. Senator DeWine and I have worked together to end the criminalization of the mentally ill since the 106th Congress when we introduced and passed into law a bill that established a small demonstration program to help communities begin and operate mental health courts. Response to the mental health courts program has been tremendous, with the Department of Justice receiving applications from far more communities than they could fund with the small appropriations allocated for the program.

I am fortunate that two of the mental health courts grants have been awarded to jurisdictions that serve my constituents in Youngstown, Ohio and Athens, Hocking, and Vinton counties.

To build on the success of the mental health courts, Senator DeWine and I introduced the bill before us today. As a counseling psychologist who has worked at a maximum security prison, I know how important this legislation is for improving mental health treatment. This bill addresses one small part of the mentally ill population's complex treatment system by seeking to treat mentally ill individuals who are or who become involved in the criminal or juvenile justice systems.

According to the Bureau of Justice statistics, over 16 percent of adults incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons have a mental illness. In addition, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention reports that over 20 percent of the youth in the juvenile justice system have serious mental health problems, and many more have co- occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders. If a person with mental illness does not receive treatment, his or her condition almost certainly will worsen when he or she is in custody. Generally, the criminal justice system is not equipped to identify and ensure that people with mental illness find appropriate treatment programs, either through diversion into community treatment or within a jail or prison.

The Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act addresses the needs of both the criminal justice system and the mentally ill offender population. The bill creates a grant program for communities that will provide resources for diversion programs across the spectrum of the criminal justice system. Communities will also be able to design programs that provide mental health treatment in jails and in prisons.

And, finally, grants will be available for transitional and aftercare programs that seek to ensure offenders are provided appropriate treatment and care when they transition from jail back into the community. They transition from the jail or prison back into the communities when they have completed their sentences.

In addition, the bill calls for an interagency task force to be established at the Federal level. Task force members will include the Attorney General, the Secretaries of Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, Veterans Affairs, and Housing and Urban Development and the Commissioner of Social Security who will be charged with identifying ways that Federal Departments can respond in a collaborative way to the needs of mentally ill adults and juveniles.

I believe that encouraging collaboration at the Federal, State, and local levels of government is essential to ensuring that people with mental illness are able to access appropriate treatment. Again, I would like to thank the chairman of the committee and the staff of the committee, as well as Members on my side of the aisle and for Senator Mike DeWine's heroic efforts in the Senate for bringing this bill to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in support of H.R. 3015. I would first like to thank the Energy and Commerce Committee staff for their great work on this bill. I would also like to thank my colleagues Mr. Pallone, Mr. Norwood, and Mr. Whitfield and their staff for their hard work. H.R. 3015 includes prescription monitoring provisions similar to those included in H.R. 3870, a bill Congressman Norwood and I introduced earlier this year. While, H.R. 3870 is a more comprehensive effort to close loopholes in current law that lead to prescription drug abuse, I am very pleased with the progress that has been made in H.R. 3015 on prescription drug monitoring.

I am particularly interested in deterring prescription drug diversion because of the immense problem of OxyContin abuse in many of the rural Appalachian Ohio counties I represent. I have received letters from constituents whose sons and daughters have died after taking a crushed OxyContin tablet. These tragedies cannot go unchecked. I am sure that OxyContin is not the only prescription drug that is abused in Appalachia, but its abuse is the most obvious example of the devastating consequences of prescription drug diversion.

H.R. 3015 would build on existing State prescription monitoring programs by providing grants through the Department of Health and Human Services for States to establish, operate, and update prescription monitoring programs. These grants are meant to ensure State monitoring systems can share information with other States, and our intention is to expand and improve current State monitoring programs without eliminating the work that, for example, Kentucky or Nevada has already done.

I believe that drugs like OxyContin are important advances in pain management, but we must work to stop the dangerous abuse of such drugs. H.R. 3015 is a positive step in that direction.

Again, I thank my colleagues and congratulate them on this compromise legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take my Special Order at this time.

Mr. Speaker, tonight there is going to be a debate in Cleveland, Ohio, my home State. I believe probably millions and millions of Americans will be watching. One of the things I hope they listen for is a question that I feel certain the Vice President will receive.

The Vice President, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, continues to say that there was a link between Iraq and Saddam Hussein and the attack upon our country.

That is a very fundamental thing for the American people to consider, because I believe most Americans, if they believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking our country on September 11, 2001, they would feel that what we have done by going into Iraq was totally justified.

But all of the evidence from really authoritative sources, and I am talking about the 9/11 Commission and most recently I am talking about the FBI, has indicated that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein, Iraq and the attack upon America. Just yesterday, the FBI indicated that as far as they can tell, there was no collaboration between Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda terrorism network.

And so we find ourselves tonight bogged down in a war that has consumed over 1,000 American lives, has resulted in the injury of nearly 7,000 American soldiers, and we are finding ourselves unable to establish any connection between Iraq and the attack upon our country. And so while we are losing soldiers, while we are spending billions of dollars, while we are seeing the terrible injuries to our soldiers in Iraq, Osama bin Laden, the individual who was in fact responsible for attacking our country, the al Qaeda terrorism network, is now spreading throughout the world.

What we have done in Iraq is not unlike what some of my friends used to do as young kids, going into the woods and finding a hornets' nest and throwing rocks or walnuts at it and stirring up the hornets and then having to suffer with the consequences of that. There is a way you can capture the hornets' nest as a trophy to hang in your barn or in your garage, but you need to use your head, you need to be prepared, you need to take equipment, you need to have a screen to put over yourself, you need to go to that hornets' nest when there is not a lot of hornet activity around it. You need to plug the hole where the hornets go in and out of that nest before you attempt to take it from the tree.

But, no, that is not the way we attacked or planned the attack on Iraq. It was like a kid taking a stick and starting to beat a hornets' nest. The hornets are now out there.

Iraq has become a hotbed for terrorism. The President says Iraq is the central part of our war on terrorism. It may be now, but it was not before this war started. There is no evidence that the terror network was operating in Iraq. But now we have created a situation where terrorists from all over the world are gathering in that country, and they are fighting and they are killing our people.

Our resources are being consumed. And the President has no plan to free us from this morass and the Vice President continues to say to the American people that there was a connection, in spite of the 9/11 Commission report, in spite of what the FBI says.

I believe the American people want us to fight the terrorists. I want us to fight the terrorists. That is why nearly all of us, save one, voted to support the war in Afghanistan. And as Senator Kerry reminded the President in the debate a few nights ago, it was Osama bin Laden who attacked us. It was the al Qaeda terror network that attacked us. It was not Saddam Hussein and Iraq. The American people need to be aware of that as they decide who they want to be the person that makes the decisions regarding our foreign policy in the years ahead of us.

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about a matter that is of very grave importance to the veterans of our country. I am referring to an article that was in The Washington Post this past Sunday. The article mentioned that thousands of U.S. troops are now returning to this country from Iraq and Afghanistan with physical injuries and mental health problems. They are encountering a VA benefit system that is already overburdened, and officials and veterans groups are concerned that the challenge could grow as this Nation remains at war.

Currently, we have had well over 1,000 of our soldiers killed in Iraq, and we have had 6,000 to 7,000 of our soldiers seriously injured. Many of those soldiers have lost limbs, they have been blinded, they have sustained brain injuries and terrible disfigurements. Many of those injuries are occurring as the result of roadside bombs which explode as these soldiers are out on patrol.

The disability benefits and health care system, as noted in The Washington Post article, this system that

provides services for about 5 million American veterans, has been overloaded for decades. We know that. The current backlog consists of more than 300,000 claims. That is 300,000 of our veterans who are waiting to get their claims adjudicated.

Mr. Speaker, because we have mobilized so many of our Reservists and National Guard persons to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly 150,000 have become eligible for health care and VA benefits as of August 1, and that number is rising. But this is the alarming information that is contained in The Washington Post article.

It says: ``At the same time, President Bush's budget for 2005 calls for cutting of the Department of Veterans Affairs staff that handles benefit claims, and some veterans report long waits for benefits and confusing claims decisions.''

Think of that. At a time when we are at war, when more and more of our soldiers are being terribly injured and are in need of the VA health care system, when claims are backlogged amounting to 300,000, the President sends this Congress a budget that actually calls for cuts in the number of people who are responsible for processing these claims.

The article that I am referring to makes reference to one particular soldier. ``I love the military. That was my life,'' says this soldier, ``but I don't believe they are taking care of me now.''

He is Staff Sergeant Gene Westbrook, 35, of Lawton, Oklahoma. He was paralyzed in a mortar attack near Baghdad this past April, but he has received no disability benefits because they say his paperwork is missing. Now he is trying to support himself, his wife and his three children on his regular military pay of $2,800 a month as he awaits a ruling that could provide him up to $6,500 a month in terms of VA disability benefits.

Mr. Westbrook was deployed to Iraq in January where he served as a drill sergeant. He was sent to train Iraqi Army recruits. While on duty on April 28, south of Sadr City in Baghdad, he was hit by a mortar shell and the shrapnel severed his spine. He is now paralyzed from the chest down. He has limited movement in his right arm and he battles constant infections. His wife takes care of him full time.

Sergeant Westbrook praises the Army for the medical care he has received, but is it not shameful that this veteran would be waiting for benefits, and that we would have a President who would cut the budget for those who are charged with processing these claims?

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Washington State for yielding.

Why do we stand here and talk about this subject late at night? The reason is because the people who have made the decisions which have brought us to this current situation, this mess that we face in Iraq, where we have lost well over 1,000 of our soldiers' lives, where approximately 7,000 of our American soldiers have been injured, these same people, and I am talking about from the President to the Vice President Cheney on down to Secretary Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and others, the so-called ``neo cons,'' they have made the decisions which have led us to this place where we are tonight.

We are in a mess. We are in a quagmire in Iraq, and we talk about what has happened in the past because the same people who have brought us to this point want to remain in positions of decision-making. They want to remain in power, and they want to make decisions for what we do in the future.

I just a few moments ago left a dinner that I had with some of my friends from Ohio. These are people who have children and young relatives, and we were talking about the fact that we are in a situation in this country where our military is stretched so thinly that we are literally extending Reserve and National Guards persons well beyond any reasonable length of service in Iraq. They have been jerked out of their communities, away from their families, away from their jobs and professional responsibilities, and they find themselves now in Iraq.

We have a situation where we have instituted the so-called backdoor draft where those who had felt that they had long since fulfilled their military obligations to this country, some in their forties, even I believe many in their fifties, are being pulled out of their communities, away from their families, sent to Iraq.

We are taking our troops away from other really troubled spots in this world, and I would especially mention South Korea. We know that North Korea has stated they are going to go ahead and pursue their nuclear strategies. We are bringing troops away from South Korea simply because we cannot meet our military obligations.

We have got about 135,000 to 140,000 American troops in Iraq tonight. The next country that has a significant number of troops in Iraq is Great Britain. They have got somewhere in the vicinity of 6,500. We have got 135,000 to 140,000, and the reports are that even Great Britain is considering withdrawing up to one-third of their troops from Iraq.

So what do we have? We have a situation where every mother and father in this country should pay attention if they have a child and they do not want that child facing a military draft and being forced to go fight this war that George Bush has started in Iraq. I do not care if a parent's child is 10 years old or 14 years old or 18 years old. If they do not want that son or daughter to be subject to a military draft, they should be paying attention, because although the President says he has no intention of instituting a mandatory draft, if you look at the situation, you look at our manpower needs, you look at the fact that the National Guard is currently having difficulty recruiting sufficient numbers, that they are even taking people who are pre-enlisting, they may still be completing their education, for example, and will not actually be eligible to enter the military for another year or so, they are counting those people as new recruits in order to at least pretend that we are meeting our current manpower needs. That is happening right now.

Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, my understanding is that those people, those citizens out there, are now being considered deserters because they have not reported.

This is a serious matter. I think the President should be talking to the American people in a very straightforward way about how he intends to meet our military personnel manpower needs without a draft.

Just simply saying we are not going to have a draft is not an answer, because we have the need.

What happens, for example, if something were to break loose on the Korean peninsula? What happens? North Korea is basically thumbing their nose at this administration and basically saying, what are you going to do to us? You are bogged down there in Iraq. Your military is stretched thin. What are you going to do to us if we decide to continue to pursue our efforts to acquire nuclear weapons?

Then there is Iran. Iran is saying basically the same thing. Do they feel intimidated by us? Well, apparently not, because they are indicating they are going to go right ahead with their nuclear program. And we are bogged down in Iraq.

Now, the fact is that Iraq did not have a nuclear program. Iraq was not an imminent threat to this country. Iraq did not present a danger to the American people, but we have diverted our resources and our military capabilities to Iraq, and now we are bogged down there. It is a quagmire. The President wants to avoid that word, but when you have large geographic areas and huge cities in Iraq that are off limits, that are ``no-go zones,'' where our soldiers cannot even enter, then you are living in a make-believe world to say things are going well; that we are going to have elections in January; that democracy is on the march. It is not.

We are not winning in Iraq. And it is not the fault of our soldiers. We honor the service of our soldiers, all of us in this chamber do. But we are just sick and tired of the lack of candor coming from this administration.

Before the gentleman asks those questions, Madam

Speaker, if he will continue to yield, I would like to make one further comment.

I would hope every parent in this country would ask themselves, as they contemplate this war and the situation in which we find ourselves, do they believe that this President's leadership is such that his wisdom, his maturity, his judgment is such that they would entrust their son or their daughter to go fight this war in Iraq?

And the reason I think that is a relevant question is because the President is asking no one to sacrifice for this war save the soldiers who are there risking their lives, in too many cases dying and being injured, and the people who love them back here at home. No one else is being asked to participate in this war.

We are not being asked to pay taxes to pay for the war. We are not being asked to in any way discipline ourselves by saving energy so that we are less reliant on the Middle East for oil and gasoline and such. The President is not sacrificing for this war. It has not touched his life in any direct way. Members of this House, our friends in the other body, by and large, are not sacrificing for this war. I believe there are maybe two Members of the 435 Members of the House and 100 Senators who actually have a child, a son or daughter, who is a part of the active military now.

So we are not sacrificing during this war. The American people generally are not being asked to sacrifice. Are we being asked to pay taxes so that the cost of this war will not be passed on to future generations? No. No. That is not happening.

So it seems appropriate that as we contemplate the fact that some moms and dads are sacrificing and have sacrificed, some husbands and wives have sacrificed, this very night they go to bed wondering whether or not their loved one is going to be safe, it seems that we should reflect upon what is happening here with regard to the fact that we have entered a war of choice.

Iraq did not attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. The al Qaeda network attacked us. Iraq was not an imminent threat, yet we find our sons and daughters fighting and dying in this war. So I think it is appropriate to pause and say to the mothers and fathers in this country, do you think this war is worth the sacrifice of your son or your daughter?

And if the people who are listening cannot answer that question in the affirmative, it seems to me then that they should start to question whether or not the sacrifice of some other moms' or dads' sons or daughters is worth the sacrifice.

Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I would like to answer that question.

He was absolutely wrong. And in spite of all the evidence, the evidence, for example, that is coming from the 9/11 Commission, this bipartisan commission that found that there was no credible relationship between Saddam Hussein and the attack upon our country, in spite of that evidence, the Vice President continues to try to mislead the American people and to cause the American people to see a connection that did not exist between Saddam Hussein and the attack upon our Nation.

So the answer to the gentleman's second question is, the President was wrong.

Madam Speaker, he was wrong again. The fact is that this question points to the fact that the civilian leadership within this administration really discounted the professional military advice coming to us from the military folks who had given their lives to studying and having knowledge about these issues. The fact is that General Shinseki, they say he was not fired, but he was pushed aside. He was forced into retirement because they did not want to hear what he had to say. When he gave advice that they found inconsistent with their own predetermined notions of what they wanted to do, they forced General Shinseki into retirement. Once again, the President was wrong.

Madam Speaker, I know something about body armor. There have been accusations that one of the candidates for president voted against an $87 billion supplemental request, somehow deprived our soldiers of body armor. I know something about this because, early on in the conflict, a young constituent of mine, a graduate of West Point and a gung-ho Army guy, wrote to me and said, my men wonder why they do not have this body armor protection. The fact is I started writing letters to Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers.

I got letters back, and basically, they said to me, we did not plan adequately, we do not have the materials that are necessary to provide this body armor.

So the truth is, in answer to the gentleman's question, the President was wrong because the President chose to send our young soldiers into battle without body armor. It took this administration an entire year from March of 2003 until March 2004 to protect all of our soldiers with individual body armor. And the body armor I am talking about is referred to as the interceptor vest. It costs about $1,500 a piece. It is composed of a vest made of

Kevlar with pockets in the front and back for the insertion of ceramic plates. This vest is capable of stopping an AK-47 round. I believe to the core of my being that we have had soldiers lose their lives and be unnecessarily injured simply because this administration prematurely sent our soldiers into battle without this vital equipment. The President was wrong when he sent our troops into battle without adequate body armor.

On this question, this ninth question, I think the President is partly right. I think he is mostly wrong because as my friend from Washington has indicated, the people

in Iraq simply do not want us there. All the opinion polls indicate that. When you see the people dancing in the streets when one of our tanks has been exploded or something, oftentimes you see young Iraqi children. These are not foreigners that have invaded Iraq. But I will admit that the President is partly right, because some of the people in Iraq now are in fact terrorists from outside the country.

But that leads to another question. When did they come there, and why are they there? The evidence is that Iraq was not a country that was filled with al Qaeda terrorists prior to this war, but in fact since this war has started, now Iraq is becoming a haven for terrorists. Terrorists are in fact coming. Some of the Taliban, we are even being told, the former Taliban terrorists that were in Afghanistan are now finding some haven for themselves in Iraq. Some of the large cities in Iraq are havens for the terrorists. These are the so-called no-go zones where our troops cannot go and say they are places which are really breeding terrorists.

So I do think that we have created a mess in Iraq. We have taken a country that was not an imminent threat to us, we took a country that was controlled by an authoritarian, despicable dictator who abused his own people, that is true. That is Saddam Hussein. Are we glad he is gone? Absolutely. He was a terrible human being, a terrible person. But the fact is that does not cover the problem we have of justifying invading Iraq as the President indicated because they were connected to the attack on our country or they were somehow an imminent danger to us or were developing nuclear weapons or had weapons of mass destruction.

None of those things are true. So what I am trying to say to my friend in regard to his ninth question, which I think is a thoughtful question, we have created in Iraq, or this administration has created in Iraq, a breeding ground for terrorists, and many of those terrorists are homegrown Iraqis. Some of them are the result of outsiders seeing an opportunity now to go into Iraq because of all the chaos that exists there and join this effort against the United States.

Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, to make an effort just to clarify what I am saying, the President has made every attempt to convince the American people that the war in Iraq is the war against terror, and he has tried to blur the distinctions between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. He has tried to imply that al Qaeda, this terrorist network, was operative in Iraq.

The fact is that the American people know better. They know the war on terror is the war against Osama bin Laden and against those who attacked our country. And the fact is that when the President tries to blur that distinction, I think he is doing a disservice to the American people.

There is a war in Iraq, a preemptive war which we initiated. There is a war against terror, against those who were associated with Osama bin Laden and who are determined to once again strike our country. And I would just remind the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) that the leader of the war against us in terms of a terrorist network is Osama bin Laden. And Osama bin Laden is alive and well somewhere. And this President spoke for 63 minutes at the Republican convention and never once mentioned his name.

Madam Speaker, I like that suggestion from my friend from Washington State, that we need to convey to Iraqis that we do not intend to stay there.

A second suggestion I would like to make is we need to convey to the world community that this is their problem, not just an American problem. Stability in the Middle East, access to the resources, the oil resources in the Middle East, is important for so many countries, not just us. But the fact is that this President and this administration really have stuck their thumbs in the eyes, figuratively speaking, of so many of our traditional allies.

The fact is that we had this administration announcing right off that the work to do the reconstruction in Iraq would only go to certain companies, Halliburton being the primary one, and no other countries could or would be involved. So we basically said we do not want you involved, because, as was said earlier, we thought it was going to be easy sailing. We would go in there, they would love us, democracy would bloom, we would have access to oil, and we did not want the help of other countries.

Now it has gotten pretty tough, and we find more and more of even the coalition partners pulling back, pulling away. Some countries have pulled out entirely. Even Great Britain, they are talking about the possibility of reducing their force in Iraq by one-third. So I believe we do need to internationalize the effort in Iraq.

We need to go to the UN, we need to go to NATO. We need to say this is a problem that is of importance to all of us, the solution must come from all of us, and the burden must be borne by all of us.

Now, can President Bush do that? I doubt if he can. I think he has so poisoned the water in terms of our international relationships that it is highly unlikely that we will ever be able to develop the kind of international cooperation and coalition that will enable us to extricate ourselves from Iraq in a timely manner with honor. So that is why I believe we need a change in administration.

Now, our traditional allies, and I am talking about the Europeans that have fought wars with us and been our partners, I do not think they like to be alienated from us. I do not think they like a division between our country and their country. I believe they would welcome an opportunity for a rapprochement, for a coming together, even to deal with this most difficult issue. But I do not think it will happen under the leadership of this President or this administration.

So my suggestion, in addition to the one I have heard from my colleague and friend from Washington State, is that we move forward with a renewed effort to internationalize the conflict in that part of the world, and I think it can be done, and I think it will be done under new presidential leadership.

Madam Speaker, I just want to thank my friend the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) and my friend the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) for participating tonight. What we are talking about is quite serious, it involves life and death, it involves the future of our Nation, and the American people need to be paying attention, because this war could drag on for 50 years or more.

We have unleashed a hornet's nest in the Middle East and I see no plan to bring it under control. All we are promised by this administration basically is more of the same or something worse, out- and-out civil war, with our troops caught in the cross fire.

So it is important that we talk about these matters, it is important that the American people pay attention to these matters, because we are going to be making a decision in 32 days, or something like that, regarding the future of this Nation, and I believe under the current administration we will have nothing but more of the same.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take the time of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

Mr. Speaker, in just a few short days, the American people will make a decision that will determine the future of our Nation for at least the next 4 years and maybe for the next four decades. We find ourselves in a situation where more and more Americans are losing their health insurance, more of our retirees are in fear that their retirement benefits will be reduced or eliminated, more of our young people are finding it increasingly difficult to afford a college education, more of our senior citizens are finding it impossible to buy the medicines they need, and, sadly, more and more of our American troops are losing their lives on a daily basis in Iraq and literally thousands of our troops have been and continue to be wounded in that war.

We find ourselves with the situation in Afghanistan where the Taliban is reconstituting its authority and power and we face the situation where long after our country was attacked by the terrorists, the mastermind of those attacks that took the lives of our citizens in New York and Pennsylvania and here at the Pentagon in Washington, the mastermind of that attack, of those attacks, Osama bin Laden, is still on the loose. We know not where he is. He is seldom mentioned. Yet the President claims that we are winning the war on terror when the major terrorist has not been apprehended and continues to be free to plan the next attack whenever or wherever that may occur.

The President spoke at the Republican Convention for 63 minutes, quite a long time, and yet he never once mentioned the name of Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden, the man who orchestrated the attacks upon our country. Osama bin Laden. Not Saddam Hussein but Osama bin Laden. It is almost as if the President has forgotten how to pronounce that name. I point this out for I think a very legitimate reason. As long as the person who was responsible for attacking our country is still on the loose, has not been apprehended, is it not reasonable to assume that the American people would conclude that we are still threatened by this man? That regardless of what we have been able to claim in Afghanistan, we have failed in the primary mission?

The President told us shortly after September 11 that Osama bin Laden could run but he could not hide. Those were the President's words. He can run but he cannot hide. The sad truth is that he ran and he has successfully hidden and this night he is somewhere planning the next attack. Symbolically, he is the hero to the terrorists. And as long as Osama bin Laden is on the loose, the terrorists can say they have not yet defeated us.

I get a little tired of hearing the rhetoric that is coming from the White House, that is coming from Secretary Rumsfeld and occasionally from Colin Powell, although he tends to be a little quieter about it. I get a little tired of hearing from Vice President Dick Cheney that things are going well, that we are winning in Iraq. The fact is that much of Iraq is off limits to our soldiers. They are called no-go zones. Our soldiers cannot go there. Well, they can only go there if the Iraqi interim governmental leadership wants them to or says they should, and in those cases they may wander into those no-go zones. They tell us we are going to have elections in January. Yet with much of Iraq off limits, I wonder, and I think it is a legitimate question to ask, how can we have elections when we cannot even enter large cities in Iraq?

The President needs to come clean with the American people. He needs to tell us the truth. We are capable of dealing with the truth. We are not capable of dealing with misleading deceptions and what I consider manipulation and deceit on the part of this administration.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, what I think I heard the gentleman say sounds almost unbelievable.

If he would, Mr. Speaker, but what I think I heard him say was that the pharmaceutical companies are offering a senior citizen $4,000 if they will be willing to say something positive about this benefit?

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, so if a senior is on a fixed income and the Social Security premium goes up less than 3 percent and yet the Medicare premium goes up 17.4 percent, what is that senior on a fixed income to do when they are already living on the edge, they are already having a struggle to buy food and get their medicines, pay their bills, heat their homes? What are they to do? What does this President say to an 80-year-old man or woman who is living at the edge in terms of their income? What does this President say? What do the leaders in this House have to say to those folks?

Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, I was just standing here thinking if you are a working person, if you are a senior citizen, if you are a veteran in this country, you had better look out, because this administration is out to get you. They are cutting veterans' health care funding. They certainly are not doing anything for the working people, who are seeing the tax burden of this Nation shifted more and more from the very wealthy on to the backs of the working folks. And then when it comes to the older people in this country, when it comes to our senior citizens, they are really getting the shaft.

The fact is that since George Bush became President, Medicare part B premiums have increased 56 percent. In less than 4 years they have increased 56 percent. But back home in Ohio, in Southeastern Ohio, we have an old saying about the chickens coming home to roost. I think the chickens are coming home to roost for the Republicans, because the senior citizens are starting to understand what is happening to them.

A story in the Columbus Dispatch, September 12, it says: ``Medicare expense becoming a big issue in the election fight.'' If I can just share the opening paragraph, it says: ``Medicare has emerged as a volatile issue in this year's elections as Democrats vow to roll back a sharp increase in premiums announced this month.''

Those premiums are increasing, as has been said here, 17.4 percent. That means that beginning in January, and that is after the election, but beginning in January a senior citizen will be required to pay for part B, their Medicare part B premium, $78.20. That amounts to $938.40 a year.

I repeat to my friend, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), the question I asked him a little earlier: If you are a senior citizen and you have health problems that require medication to keep you healthy or to keep you alive, in many cases, and you are on a fixed income, as many of our seniors are, and this President decides to increase your premium 17.4 percent, and your Social Security cost of living increase is less than 3 percent, what can you do? Where can you go to get what you need to buy your medicine, to pay for your food, to heat your home, to pay your rent?

That question is facing hundreds of thousands of American senior citizens tonight, and this President has an obligation to speak to that question, because he is the one who is responsible for putting this additional burden on the backs of our senior citizens.

Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, I think it is appropriate for us to ask how would this country be without Medicare. There are some people in this administration who never believed in Medicare from the beginning. They opposed it from the very beginning. They think it is something like socialized medicine, and they think that the private sector is not being able to get its fair share.

So, quite frankly, what we face with this administration, and I believe with the President, are individuals who simply do not believe in Medicare as such.

Otherwise when they talked about a prescription drug benefit, they simply would have made this benefit a part of traditional Medicare. They would simply have added A, B, C, and part D and said that is the prescription drug benefit to Medicare. We would have had a modest premium, and it would have been a part of traditional Medicare. But no, no, no, they want to go to the private sector. As a result of going to the private sector, as the gentleman has said, it is costing more, seniors are more limited in their choices, their premiums are going up, their deductibles are going it up, and they will continue to go up.

This year, it is 17.4 percent. Next year, when there is no election facing the administration, if they happen to retain power, it could be 25 percent. No one knows what is going to happen, because this administration, I believe, fundamentally does not believe in traditional Medicare.

So what do you do when you do not believe in a program? Well, you try to change it fundamentally, and that is what they are trying to do. This is the first step in the privatization of medicare, to relieve the government of this responsibility. And I ask, what would America be like tonight without Medicare? If George Bush and the leadership of this House and the Senate of this country have their way, we may find out what America will be like without Medicare.

Mr. Speaker, listening to this discussion and listening to the things the gentleman said about this bill and how it came into being, I

would say that for a senior citizen to continue to vote for those in power would be not unlike a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders. Now, we all know down in Kentucky and Ohio and around there that Colonel Sanders sells Kentucky Fried Chicken. It is pretty good stuff. But quite frankly, Colonel Sanders is no friend of the chicken, and I believe that this administration is no friend to America's senior citizens.

When we think about what is being discussed here, it is outrageous. It is absolutely outrageous. What we are talking about is not theoretical. We are talking about real people, older Americans. We are talking about tax dollars that are being given to pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies. We are talking about decisions being made that are almost irrational, if we consider them in a serious manner.

This administration pushed through a law that says, we cannot negotiate discounts. I mean, Sam's Club negotiates discounts. As the gentleman said, the gentleman from Ohio, the Veterans Administration negotiates discounts for pharmaceutical medications. Yet, this President and the leadership in this House said oh, no, no, no. Medicare cannot negotiate discounts for our senior citizens. Why? Because the pharmaceutical companies wanted that provision in the law. It is outrageous.

So it is fair to say that President Bush believes that America's senior citizens should pay more for their drugs than Canadian senior citizens. He believes that American senior citizens should pay more for their drugs than English senior citizens or German senior citizens or Belgium senior citizens or Swedish or French senior citizens. That is what we have. America's senior citizens are paying more, senior citizens in other countries are paying less; and this President says that is the way it ought to be. He is standing in the way, with the leadership in this House, of those of us who feel that this is wrong, having the ability to change it.

Mr. Speaker, we have talked about the problems with this bill. What is the solution?

Well, I think these problems could be solved if the President would pick up the phone and call the gentleman from Illinois (Speaker Hastert) and say, Speaker Hastert, I want a bill that allows the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada into this country. And if the President said to the gentleman from Illinois (Speaker Hastert), Mr. Speaker, I want a bill that allows our government to negotiate cheaper prices for our senior citizens with the pharmaceutical industry, the President could do that, and I believe the Speaker would accommodate him. A bill

could be brought to this floor; and with the President's support, it would pass overwhelmingly.

So what is the problem? The problem is the President is on the wrong side of these two issues. He is on the wrong side of other issues as well regarding this bill, but especially on the issue of importing cheaper drugs from Canada, something that most Americans want. Americans cannot understand, they just simply cannot understand why a drug can be sold in Canada at a profit, at a profit. The drug companies are not losing money when they sell these drugs in Canada. So the American people ask, how can a drug company sell a drug in Canada and make a profit and then sell that same drug in this country for two or three or four times as much as they are charging in Canada? What is right about that, when we have older people on fixed incomes who are desperate?

I do not know if the President, as he is out and about the country campaigning, encounters the same kind of people that I do, but every time I go back to my southeastern and southern Ohio district, I encounter older people who are desperate. They simply do not know how they are going to make it.

It would be so simple. We could accomplish this in a few hours' time if the President would simply take the leadership and do it, but thus far, he is leading in the opposite direction. I think the American people need to know that, that if they are concerned about high drug costs and they are concerned about Canada and France and all these other countries getting the drugs more cheaply, they need to know that the President is one of the reasons for that, because he refuses to speak up and speak out and to provide the leadership.

Mr. Speaker, as we contemplate what is happening in Iraq with the continued loss of life, the continued injuries, I would just remind my colleagues in this chamber that the only people who are being asked to sacrifice for this war are the soldiers and the people who love them. No one else is being asked to sacrifice for this war.

We are not paying for this war. The President has decided that future generations should pay for this war, so we are using borrowed money, passing the bill on to the next generation. So the taxpayer is not being asked to pay for the war at the present time. Of course, future taxpayers will pay for it.

The President is not sacrificing for this war. No one in this chamber is sacrificing for this war. No one in the Senate is sacrificing. Well, I think we may have two colleagues out of the 535 Members of both the House and the Senate who have active duty sons or daughters in the military, but most of us do not have anyone in our families that we know who are in harm's way or who have been killed or who have been seriously injured. Yet, we stand here in this chamber and the President stands and he talks in glowing terms about, we need to stay the course and we are totally committed.

I wish we were totally committed. I wish the President was totally committed in terms of paying for this war without expecting future generations to pay. I wish the President was committed enough to continue to provide the money that our Veterans' Administration needs to provide adequate care for our veterans who are coming back from this war in desperate need of VA medical care. But no, only the soldiers and their loved ones are sacrificing or are being asked to sacrifice. I think that is very troubling.

It is easy to make decisions when it involves someone else's child. Maybe the only thing that will bring common sense back to this chamber and to this administration is to have the burden shared by all of us so that all of us who have loved ones who may be subject to military service would be asked to serve. Would that make a difference in our thinking?

I believe if the people who are so supportive of our current policies in Iraq so firmly believe that the direction in which we are going is the correct direction, I think they should be willing to see their sons and their daughters join the military, take up the battle, share the risk. And those who are not willing to have their loved ones put at risk should think very, very carefully about how enthusiastic they are about our current course of action.

We voted in this chamber, 434 to 1, I believe, when we pursued the war in Afghanistan, because we all understood that was the war on terror.

It was Afghanistan and the Taliban regime and Osama bin Laden that attacked our country. And somehow there has been a bait and switch. We have taken the attack upon our country, and we have used it to go into Iraq.

The President spoke for 63 minutes when he gave his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, and he never mentioned Osama bin Laden's name one time. All the talk there in New York about September 11, about the attack upon our country, but the man who was responsible for attacking our country was not even mentioned by the President. Saddam Hussein's name was mentioned many times, but not the one who was responsible.

Tonight, somewhere on the face of God's good Earth, Osama bin Laden is walking free, planning the next attack upon our country. And our resources were diverted from Iraq and from the Taliban and stabilizing Afghanistan to Iraq. We need to rethink our policies.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman from Massachusetts yield to me on that point?

I just wanted to point out to my friend from Washington, Mr. Speaker, that not only is this gentleman that he is talking about responsible for some of the beheadings, the reports are that he himself, he himself has been the individual that has actually carried out the beheadings of Americans.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from Massachusetts will yield once again.

Mr. Speaker, some may ask, why are these Members of the House of Representatives standing here talking about past history?

Why are they not talking about what is happening today? Well, sadly, we lost three more American soldiers today. Three more today. Every day we are losing American soldiers.

But we are talking about what has happened in the past and the mistakes that were made in the past because the very people who are responsible for that terrible misjudgment or those misjudgments are the very same people who want to remain in power so that they can make decisions for the future. So, in a sense, as we talk about what happened in the past tonight, we are doing it because we are concerned about the future. We are concerned about the same people who made such terrible misjudgments, who misled the American people, want to continue to be in those positions of power.

I would agree with my friend that we have misplaced our priorities. During the Republican convention in New York, the President spoke for 63 minutes during his acceptance speech. And all during that convention there were multiple references to the tragedy of September 11, when so many Americans were killed. But it is almost beyond belief to know that the President talked for 63 minutes, and never once did he mention Osama bin Laden. There are multiple references throughout that week to Saddam Hussein, but not one reference on the part of the President to Osama bin Laden, the man who was responsible, the one who attacked our country, the one who masterminded that terrible day of September 11.

It is as though he has disappeared. We do not hear his name mentioned even by the President. He is the one the President referred to in this very chamber when he said, ``He can run, but he cannot hide.'' The sad truth is, he ran, and he has successfully hidden. And in his hiding, he is planning the next attack upon this country. That is the sad truth.

It is almost as if we have decided that Osama bin Laden is no longer important, this one who was the major person responsible for attacking us. It is almost beyond belief that we could find ourselves in this situation at this point in time after all that has happened. I just think we should remind ourselves that we have not yet apprehended the person who attacked our country.

Sure, we have gone into Iraq. We have spent about $200 billion. We have seen about 6,000 or 7,000 of our soldiers injured. We have lost well over 1,000 American lives. Yet the man who was responsible for attacking us is a free man tonight, and he continues to be a danger to us.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, it is true that in spite of all evidence to the contrary and in spite of the report of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission that the Vice President continues to insist that there was a connection between Iraq, al Qaeda, and the attack upon our country.

It is amazing to me that in spite of all of this evidence that the Vice President would continue to say that. I mean, it is contrary to every expert, every study, the 9/11 Commission. Even the President himself has disassociated himself from that contention. And yet the Vice President continues to make the accusation. Why did the Vice President say something like that that has been so discredited?

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, it takes strength and it takes confidence to be willing to admit a mistake. And, quite frankly, we have not heard the President or the Vice President admit any mistakes, any mistakes. Anytime there is bad news coming out of Iraq, and it is coming out on a daily basis, the word we get from the White House is, we expected that.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, on one point, returning soldiers have told me that Halliburton is literally importing Filipinos to do much of the work in Iraq. As the gentleman said, the Iraqi people are unemployed. They have no source of support for themselves and their families. They are just unemployed with no incomes. And yet Halliburton is importing Filipinos and workers from other parts of the world who will provide cheap labor for them while the Iraqis go unemployed. That is just one example of the terrible policy that this administration is following right now.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, before the gentleman goes to his fourth point, these no-go zones are made up of the largest cities in Iraq. The largest cities in Iraq are no-go zones right now. The gentleman is right. We are not going into those cities now. But the elections are scheduled for the end of January next year. And there is every intention that we are going to go into those cities before the Iraqi elections. If they have the Iraqi elections and much of the country cannot participate, it will be considered an invalid election. People will not be able to accept it. So we know that the intention of this Pentagon, President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld, is to go into these no-go zones before the end of January.

But they are not doing it now, and I think my friend has indicated why we are not doing it now. We are not doing it now because it is going to be a tough thing to do. We are 41 days in front of our elections, and so basically we are letting these no-go zones fester.

Even members of the Taliban now are moving into some of these no-go zones. So we have the terrorists, the insurgents, building up their networks within these no-go zones, and when we do go in, it is going to be terribly difficult to dislodge them, to overcome them and overtake them. But every day that passes that they have these sanctuaries, basically, they are able to increase their strength, to increase their ability to resist once we do decide to go into these areas.

If the gentleman will yield, as I am standing here listening to the two of you talk I have a chilling thought, and that thought is this: In spite of all that has gone wrong, even today it seems as if military decisions are being affected by political considerations.

Now, I understand what a serious charge that is, that military decisions would be affected or mandated or influenced by political considerations. But why would we allow these no-go zones in Iraq to remain no-go zones when we know that that cannot continue, that we have got to change that situation before the end of January, if in fact the Iraqi elections take place as planned, and the administration insists that they will take place?

That means that at some period of time between now and the elections in Iraq in January we are going to have to deal with these no-go zones. And if it is true, and I believe it is, that as each day passes the insurgents who are occupying these areas increase their strength, increase their ability to resist our Armed Forces or the Iraqi forces once they do go into those areas, then it leads me to the only conclusion that I think is rational or logical, and that is that military decisions are being influenced by political considerations, namely the November 2 election in this country, and that is terribly troubling.

I think the American people ought to understand what is going on here, because it involves the well-being of our soldiers, and I think it involves the credibility of our government as we reach out to the world for partners and partnerships.

If my friend will yield, just one example of the incompetence was the fact that our soldiers were sent into Iraq without body armor. We hear a lot of talk in this Chamber about body armor. We have heard a lot of accusations that somehow a particular person running for President other than the President himself is responsible for voting against body armor. But the fact is that initially, when our troops went into battle, they were sent into battle without body armor. Thousands of them were there without body armor.

I wrote Secretary Rumsfeld about that and asked him to give me a date certain when they all would be well-equipped with this armor, because I had heard from a young soldier, who happened to be a West Point graduate, one of my constituents, he said, ``Congressman, my men are wondering why they don't have body armor?''

The fact is that that decision was made to send our troops into battle without body armor, and the war started months before the vote on the $87 billion that is now being used to accuse others of depriving our troops of this vital equipment. That is just one example. But we also know that they were sent there without armored Humvees and in insufficient numbers. These are examples that I would consider incompetent leadership. Incompetent leadership. It continues to this very day.

Now, the President was asked this past week how he could defend his statements about how well things were going in Iraq in light of the recent report from the intelligence community saying things were not going well.

He answered this way. He said, ``Well, they laid out three possibilities: One, things would be lousy; two, things would not be so good; and things would be better.''

Well, ``things being better'' was not one of the possible outcomes, as we heard from the intelligence community. The best that they said we could expect was just more of the same, of what we have right now, and the worst was out-and-out civil war within Iraq. There was no better scenario.

The President seems incapable of just speaking forthrightly and in a candid manner about the real situation to the American people. So we hear this happy talk, and every day, more and more and more of our soldiers are being lost.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, if we go back and recall the circumstances surrounding that $87 billion, remember when the President went on national television and announced to the American people he was going to ask for an additional $87 billion, his approval rating fell like a rock, because the American people were upset that the needs here at home were being so woefully neglected, and here the President was, coming, asking for an additional $87 billion.

So many of us thought that the fair thing to do was to take that portion of the $87 billion that was going to Iraq for the rebuilding of schools and clinics and roads and bridges in Iraq, and to make that available as a loan that would be paid back to this country once Iraq was stable and they had these huge oil sales which was going to make it possible for them to repay that loan. And the White House said, no, no, no. We will only make this money available as an out-and-out gift.

Yes, a give-away. So they went to Madrid to this so- called donors' conference and they came back and they were trying to convince us as a Congress and as the American people that all of these other countries had ponied up, had given their fair share. And what did we find out, as the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) has said here, all of these countries that made monies available made them available in the form of a loan. They will, in fact, at some point be repaid for whatever they give, but not the good old USA. We gave our money away, and now the President is criticizing those of us who fought to have this given as a loan, implying, I guess, that somehow we did not care about the troops. Which is, quite frankly, a little outrageous.

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier this evening, the only people sacrificing for this war are the soldiers and the people who love them. They are the only ones who are sacrificing, and that is sad.

Mr. Speaker, I was sitting here listening to my colleagues from Florida talking about the disaster that Florida has experienced, and I thought about my own experience in Ohio over the last 2 or 3 days. Ohio is a long way from Florida, but Ohio has been affected, seriously affected by the results of the hurricane, the flooding that has occurred in a number of Ohio counties, which has absolutely been devastating.

In Columbiana County, where I was earlier today, one small township, it is estimated that they have public damages of between $400,000 and $500,000. Many roads have been completely washed out. The day before yesterday, I was in another county in my district, Belmont County, a little town called Ness, and in that community there were homes that were completely destroyed and demolished, homes where people will never be able to return to live because they were so terribly damaged. And the damage was caused, in large part, by rain that occurred as a result of the hurricanes that had come in and through Florida.

So it is true that we are very sympathetic with the good people of Florida who have suffered so deeply. We are happy that help and hope is on the way for them. But just this day, I faxed a letter to the White House asking the President to act expeditiously on a request for a Federal declaration which has been sent to him by Ohio's Governor, Bob Taft, asking that these communities in Ohio which have been so terribly, terribly affected be also declared a Federal disaster area, so that appropriate Federal resources can be made available to them.

We need FEMA to come in, to provide temporary housing. I spoke just the day before yesterday with a lady nearly 80 years old who lived by herself, whose total monthly income was $655 a month. She also was receiving, I think, $70 per month in food stamps. But her home had been literally destroyed. Her medicine costs were very high, and she was asking what kind of help would be available. And I told her that as soon as the offices opened this morning, Monday morning, that I would be on the phone to the office of FEMA here in D.C. When I contacted them this morning and asked about the request that Governor Taft had submitted for one of the counties, for Columbiana County in Ohio, we were told that the request was under consideration.

But the fact is that we can wait no longer. There are people who are living in cars. There are children who are being kept in fold-out campers. People are without water. We are concerned about the spread of disease. The bottom line is people are suffering terribly in Ohio. I call upon the administration, the President, to recognize what people are going through there.

The geographic area is much smaller than that which was affected in Florida, obviously; but I would contend that there is no one in Florida that has suffered any more than some of the people that I represent. Because when you have lost all that you have, all of your material possessions, when you have no clothing, no personal items, no furniture, when your home has been destroyed and you are with nothing, you are in desperate circumstances; and those are the circumstances that exist across part of Ohio tonight. I am hopeful that by tomorrow I will get a positive response from the President and the White House, and my hope is the help from the Federal level will be flowing into Ohio just as it is flowing into Florida.

I would also like to note, Mr. Speaker, that even the Red Cross has diverted so much of their personnel and their equipment and their resources to Florida that I am afraid that many of my constituents will fall between the cracks, so to speak, and that their terrible plight will not be expeditiously and properly recognized by our Federal Government.

Iraq

Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight, and I will be joined later by some of my colleagues, to talk about Iraq and what is happening in Iraq. This is an effort that we began literally several months ago, myself and some of my colleagues, coming here to the floor to talk about the policies that we are pursuing in Iraq and trying to point out some of the concerns that we have.

I would just begin our Iraq Watch tonight by sharing an editorial from the Columbus Dispatch, which is the capital city newspaper in Ohio. The Columbus Dispatch has been publishing since 1871. They ran an editorial this past Saturday in observance of the anniversary of September 11. I see my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), has joined me. Before I yield to him, I would just like to share some thoughts from the Columbus Dispatch because I think they are very relevant to our discussions here regarding Iraq.

The editorial is entitled, ``Remember Everything.'' It begins this way: ``Three years ago, 3,000 people were murdered in coordinated terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. Yet, the man who orchestrated those atrocities remains free. For what he did, Osama bin Laden should be dead or in U.S. custody. No evidence suggests that he is dead, and he is not in custody. Because he remains free, extraordinary security precautions surround today's Ohio State football game.'' And, as I said, this is an editorial that appeared last Saturday when Ohio State was playing Marshall University.

So the editorial says: ``These security precautions will surround today's Ohio State football game, considered a terrorist target because 100,000 spectators will be gathered in the heart of a State that is key to the Presidential election.''

The editorial continues: ``Because bin Laden is at liberty, election and law enforcement officials nationwide are busy planning extra security at polling places on November 2. Because bin Laden has not been captured, the Nation's Capital and national monuments, including the Statue of Liberty, have been militarized and fortified. The Bush administration can claim that bin Laden and his cohorts are on

the run, but bin Laden and his cohorts plausibly can claim the opposite. All bin Laden has to do is point to the armed men and surveillance helicopters around Ohio Stadium.''

How did the destruction of bin Laden slip so far down the Nation's to-do list, the Columbus Dispatch asks? Why are the bulk of U.S. military and intelligence assets tied up in Iraq, which pose only a hypothetical threat, while pursuit of the man who slaughtered thousands of Americans on their own soil is on the back burner? Where is the anger, asks the Columbus Dispatch? Where is the anger?

The September 11 victims were not killed by a natural disaster, such as a hurricane, which cannot be brought to justice and against which rage is futile. They were killed by a man. A man can be made to pay a price. Why has he not paid?

The Columbus Dispatch continues in their editorial. This is the question that President Bush should be answering today and tomorrow and every day until November 2. And the Columbus Dispatch asks, where is Senator John Kerry, who loudly proclaims his determination to strike back at any attack on the United States? The attack has occurred. Where is his pledge to make apprehension of bin Laden dead or alive job number one?

The Dispatch continues. Would bin Laden's death eliminate terrorism? Well, of course not. Quick victory over this kind of nihilism and barbarism is impossible, but every day that bin Laden remains free is a defeat for justice and for civilization. His continued existence, his ability to poison a seemingly impotent world, incites and encourages his followers and imitators.

Now, this is what we have heard from the heartland of America, from Columbus, Ohio, from the Columbus Dispatch newspaper, and I would just point out that the President told us, Mr. Speaker, at one time soon after the September 11 attacks, when bin Laden had been identified as the person responsible for attacking our country, the President told us he can run but he cannot hide. But the fact is that he ran, and thus far he has hidden successfully, and somewhere on God's Earth tonight bin Laden is planning the next attack upon our country.

Tonight, now, I ask my colleagues in this Chamber, why did we divert our attention from Afghanistan and from Osama bin Laden and focus on Iraq? At the Republican National Convention in New York, they talked a lot about September 11. The President gave a 63-minute speech and never once did he mention Osama bin Laden. Never once did the President mention the man who is responsible for attacking our country and who today, tonight, is free planning the next attack. I think the American people deserve an answer to that.

Why, after all of the resources that we have spent, some $200 billion, the over 1,000 lives that have been lost, the nearly 7,000 soldiers that have been wounded, why do we not know where bin Laden is and why have we not captured him and why have we diverted our attention from the effort to find this man? He is the enemy of America. He is the one who attacked us, and yet, somehow, his name is not uttered by our President anymore, and there seems to be no real attention directed toward bringing him to justice.

Now, the fact is we heard a lot about Saddam Hussein.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

It is almost incomprehensible that the person who was responsible for attacking our country, who has claimed responsibility, who has boasted in claiming that responsibility is a person who is free tonight. He ran and he hid, and the President does not even utter his name. It is as though we have forgotten that the real enemy, the real architect of the attack upon our country was Osama bin Laden. He has been referred to as Osama bin Forgotten, and it is quite sad to me that we have not been able to bring to justice the leading terrorist in this world.

As we contemplate a possible terror attack on this country, there has been discussions that it may happen before the election, that it may happen around the inauguration of the next President. We are not afraid that that attack is going to be directed and masterminded by Saddam Hussein. He is in jail. We are concerned about al Qaeda. We are concerned about the terror network that was established by Osama bin Laden. We are concerned about Osama bin Laden and his effect.

Just this week we heard from our military leaders in Afghanistan that they believe Osama bin Laden is actively calling the shots, even today, and yet, as I repeat, during the Republican Convention in New York, with all of the discussion of September 11, it was as if the person responsible for September 11 was unknown. The President did not utter his name during a 63-minute speech.

This is the man that we should be going after. He is the one responsible for killing nearly 3,000 of our citizens. He is the one that is heading up the al Qaeda terror network. He is free tonight somewhere on this Earth. We do not know for sure, but I want to tell my colleague I think we would have had this man in custody if we had not diverted attention and resources and our intelligence apparatus away from the hunting of Osama bin Laden to Iraq.

Every day, sadly, tragically, we are losing soldiers in Iraq. It is almost as if it is no longer news when we lose one or two or three or seven at a time. It is almost as if we have become numb to that reality. We are up to well over 1,000 now. Senator McCain has indicated that he thinks we could be in Iraq for 10 to 20 years.

If I can speak to that issue.

The President frequently says we have this coalition; and it is true that there are a number of countries, for one reason or another, some of them maybe with very noble reasons, who support us in our policy there. But the fact is that we have somewhere around 135,000, 135,000 American troops there. The next country with the largest number of troops is Great Britain; and they have, I believe, less than 6,500. Most of the other countries have a few hundred troops.

It is the American troops that is the target. We are losing the lives. We are paying the bill. About $200 billion thus far.

If we paid for it.

If I could reclaim my time, Mr. Speaker, during that debate on the $87 billion, the vast majority of the people in this country, according to public opinion polls, felt that we should provide assistance in the form of a grant, a grant that would be paid back to our citizens once Iraq was stabilized. And the gentleman is right, the President said that if we did that that he would veto the bill.

That is right.

Oh, absolutely.

Well, as someone said, it does not make sense for us to be opening firehouses in Iraq while we are closing firehouses and laying off firefighters in this country.

But the fact is this $87 billion vote is being used in the most political way, and there have been accusations that somehow when Senator Kerry opposed that, that he was opposing body armor for our troops. I would just like to point out something that I have shared with my friends here in this Chamber before. The war started in March of 2003. We did not have that vote on the $87 billion until months after the war started. Our troops were initially sent into battle without body armor. And that was a decision made by Secretary Rumsfeld and ultimately the responsibility of the President as the Commander in Chief. We sent our troops into battle without body armor.

Now, that is a fact that cannot be disputed. And it took the Pentagon one full year, from March of 2003 to March of 2004, to provide me with a letter stating that finally, after a full year, our troops had been equipped with body armor.

I questioned how many of our troops were unnecessarily injured or wounded or how many lost their lives simply because this administration sent them into combat without body armor. That was not a money problem; it was a planning problem. And the letters that I received from Secretary Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Myers, verified that it was a supply problem. They did not order that equipment in a timely manner. Months passed leading up to this war when those orders could have been placed. That body armor could have been available at the time the war started, but it took 12 full months for this administration to make sure that our troops were fully protected with body armor.

And even tonight, now, Mr. Speaker, we have troops in Iraq driving around in Humvees that are not armored in a way that will provide them at least some protection from these roadside bombs that are maiming and killing so many of our soldiers on a daily basis.

If the gentleman will allow me to reclaim my time, it seems, and I think this is verified by the September 11 Commission, that al Qaeda has gone from being an identifiable group to becoming a philosophy and an idea and a movement. And the fact is our policies have spread terror around the world. We now have Taliban/al Qaeda operatives in Iraq. There is no evidence that they were there before we invaded that country.

There are now huge cities in Iraq referred to as ``no-go zones,'' where our troops cannot enter those cities. They are under the control of al Qaeda and Taliban operatives. Huge geographic areas of Iraq that we liberated, supposedly, are now under the control of terrorists, terrorists that prior to our invasion of Iraq were not in that country. We have created a breeding ground for those who hate us.

We may be there 10 years, 20 years, no one knows. How many more deaths are going to result from these failed policies? We have already had over a thousand. Ohio lost two soldiers last week, a 19-year-old man and a 36-year-old man. How many more?

Now we stand here and talk about this. Some may wonder why go over history, why talk about past failings and past circumstances.

Because the same people who have brought us to where we are tonight, who have created this debacle that we face in Iraq, the same people who have made the decisions which have led to this terrible tragedy and loss of life and horrible injuries, these same people want to remain in charge of the decisionmaking apparatus of this government. I think it is fair to ask: What will they do next? They have acted in the most naive manner. The Vice President and others indicated that we would be welcomed into Iraq.

Just yesterday we had helicopters that fired on a group of Iraqis that were celebrating around a dysfunctional piece of U.S. military equipment. Many of those people laughing and dancing around were children. They were children. You could see their pictures, they could not have been more than 10 or 12 years of age. What are we doing in Iraq, we are creating hatred toward our government. That hatred is spreading around the world. That does not make us safer.

I believe the President has an obligation to stand up and admit mistakes, but there is a difference between an irrational pursuit of an ideology that is failing. What we need are mature leaders that will act upon a rational basis to secure friends around this world and help us extricate ourselves from these terrible circumstances.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to yield to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) but before I do, I would like to say the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) absolutely spoke the truth when he said this Nation will make a decision on November 2 regarding whether or not they want to tolerate the continuation of our current policy or whether or not they think we should change course.

The President says we either have to stay the course or cut and run. Well, I think there is a third possibility and that is to change course. The fact is if there are mothers and dads listening to us tonight who may feel disconnected from this war, who may feel they have no part of it, they do not know anyone who is participating in it, they do not know anyone who has lost a life or been seriously injured, but if they have a child, they should listen because if this administration continues its current foreign policy, I believe it will be mandatory that we impose a military draft. We cannot maintain our personnel numbers with this current foreign policy without imposing a draft. We can no longer continue forever to keep our reservists and our national guardsmen on active status. We cannot withdraw soldiers from all over this world simply because of what is happening in Iraq. So every American should be engaged in the same kind of discussion we are having tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee).

Mr. Speaker, the first death was too many, and every death that has followed has been too many because for that individual and that individual's loved ones, it will absolutely be the most devastating experience they will ever endure.

I do not think we should develop that type of amnesia.

The second amnesia that I think is very dangerous to us is to some degree the executive branch is developing amnesia about who actually attacked us, which was al Qaeda. You have talked about this earlier, I believe. But we cannot have the Commander in Chief leading us in this war to preserve our security and not identify who the enemy was that actually attacked us and go a year now without identifying the name of the person who is Osama bin Laden that the President refuses to even say. That lack of leadership has infected to some degree our efforts to track down and cut off al Qaeda.

Let me give you an example in the real world how that is. I found out a week ago that we have more employees in the Department of Treasury tracking down American tourists who go to Cuba than we do Treasury officials trying to cut off the money going to Osama bin Laden. What kind of prioritization is that? Why have we developed amnesia about how deadly al Qaeda is?

Another piece of amnesia. We have loose nukes all over the former Soviet Union, all this fissionable material that we know al Qaeda wants to get. But we cannot get the cooperation of the executive branch to put money into the system we have for vacuuming up those loose nukes and keeping them out of the hands of al Qaeda.

Why has this amnesia happened? It is pretty clear. The executive branch took their eye off the ball of Osama bin Laden and put it on Iraq. And this amnesia is a more dangerous situation rather than a less dangerous one.

Let me just suggest why I think the President has been successful to some degree in conflating Iraq with what happened on September 11. That is, that we have all sort of, I think, gone down a little primrose path calling this the war on terror. I am not sure that is the right nomenclature for us to use for this reason. It is really important to realize who your enemy is. Our enemy is a person and a group, not a tactic. Terror is a tactic. It is not a country, it is not a group, it is not an individual. It is a tactic. Calling this a war on terror frankly is a little bit like calling our response to Pearl Harbor a war on torpedo planes. Torpedo planes were a tactic. They were not the enemy. We need to call this what it is, a war on al Qaeda and a war on some fundamentalist Islamic movements that are way out of the mainstream of Islamic belief in this world and have perverted that faith and taken advantage of it for their nihilistic ends, and that is an enemy we need to keep in our sights.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friends for joining me for another hour of Iraq Watch. I look forward to continuing this next week.