Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in unwavering support of our troops. I support our troops who are stationed around the globe and, particularly, those stationed in harm's way in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. That is why I wholeheartedly support H. Con. Res. 63 which disapproves

of the President's decision to deploy more than 20,000 additional combat troops to Iraq, because support of our troops means I must vote to move them out of harm's way.

This 110th Congress debate marks the beginning of the end of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and a realignment of our strategy utilizing America's might against the war on terror.

Mr. Speaker, we now know that nothing said in justification of this war was fact. It was all fiction created by this administration to justify the unjustifiable.

Our military service men and women are doing their duty. They have accomplished their mission. They have brought Saddam Hussein to justice. Remember, ``Mission Accomplished.''

This administration has distracted us from the real war on terror, the war with al Qaeda. When are we going to bring Osama bin Laden to justice?

In Afghanistan, U.S. Central Command General Tommy Franks, the war's operational commander, misjudged the interest of our Afghan allies. He ran the war from Tampa, with no commander on the ground above the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. The first Americans did not arrive until 3 days into the fighting.

It is noted that Osama bin Laden slipped through the cordon ostensibly placed around Tora Bora as U.S. aircraft began bombing on November 30, 2002. More precisely, bin Laden was in Tora Bora on November 26, 2002, spoke to his fighters about the fight being a holy war, then, as quickly as he had come, bin Laden vanished in the pine forest with four of his loyalists walking in the direction of Pakistan.

Bin Laden escaped somewhere between November 28 and November 30, 2002, in Afghanistan.

Mr. Speaker, 5 years ago, Department of Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said, ``He,'' meaning Osama bin Laden, ``doesn't have a lot of good options.'' Obviously, that was false.

Further, it was reported that the administration pays bin Laden no attention, and that is evidenced by the fact that official reports no longer identify Osama bin Laden as a threat. The administration anticipated that they would have bin Laden erased by September 11, 2002. They failed at that mission.

Again, the failure of this administration to get the job done, to secure our homeland, and to get the man who masterminded the attacks upon us and continues to recruit and train al Qaeda agents is parallel to the failures of the mission in Iraq. The administration did not plan to fail; they failed to plan.

I support the men and women who put their lives on the line for our liberty. I am indebted to them, the sacrifices that they have made, and that is why I support this resolution. We must redeploy and make preparations to leave Iraq today.

As the representative of the 11th District from New York, I and my constituents deeply resent the lies and deceptions thrust upon us to justify this war by creating a distraction away from homeland security we all require as an inalienable right. The fire that I witnessed that refused to die was stamped out by the resilience of New Yorkers, Americans who believe in our democracy and the ultimate victory of good over evil.

The question I have and the question of the people from New York and the rest of America wants answered is: When will Osama bin Laden be brought to justice?

Thanks to the failed policies of this administration, Iraq is now in the midst of a civil war. Due to the lies and deceptions, the civil war in Iraq is now raging. We must redeploy our troops now. Thus far, there are 135,544 troops deployed in Iraq today.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today because I am very supportive of our troops around the globe and in particular those who are in harm's way in Iraq. I wholeheartedly support H. Con. Res. 63.

Mr. Speaker, in the President's January 29, 2002, State of the Union address, in regards to protecting America, responding to terrorist threats and capturing Osama bin Laden, he said, this is a regime that agreed to international inspections, then kicked out our inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.

States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred.

Secretary Rice, after being named Secretary to succeed Colin Powell, warned 6 months before the invasion in Iraq that Saddam Hussein could deploy a nuclear weapon, saying that the administration did not want a smoking gun. We want to know as New Yorkers, when will we find Osama bin Laden

Mr. Speaker, I rise today because I am very supportive of our troops around the globe and in particular those who are in harms way in Iraq. I wholeheartedly support H. Con. Res. 63.

Mr. Speaker, in the President's January 29, 2002, State of the Union address, in regards to protecting America, responding to the terrorist threat and capturing Osama bin Laden, he said (meaning Iraq): . . . This is a regime that agreed to international inspections--then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.

States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be Catastrophic.

Secretary Rice, after being named Secretary of State to succeed Colin Powell, Secretary Rice warned six months before the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein could deploy a nuclear weapon, saying that the administration did not ``want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.'' according to the Washington Post. We now know that these assertions were a fiction created by this administration to justify the unjustifiable.

U.S. Central Command Gen. Tommy Franks, the war's operational commander misjudged the interests of our Afghan allies. He ran the war from Tampa with no commander on the scene above the rank of lieutenant colonel. According to another Washington Post April 17, 2002, article; The first Americans did not arrive until 3 days into the fighting.

As a representative from NY whose constituents resent the lies and deception thrust upon us to justify this war and creating a distraction away from the homeland security we all desire the question is: When will Osama bin Laden be brought to justice.

The article continues by identifying that Osama bin Laden slipped through the cordon ostensibly placed around Tora Bora as U.S. aircraft began bombing on Nov. 30. More precisely, bin Laden was in Tora Bora on Nov. 26, spoke to his fighters about ``holy war'' then, as quickly as he had come, bin Laden vanished into the pine forests with four of his loyalists walking in the direction of Pakistan. bin Laden escaped according to the Christian Science Monitor, somewhere between Nov. 28 to Nov. 30 as confirmed by Arabs and Afghans in eastern Afghanistan.

Mr. Speaker, I support our troops and that is why we must commence the redeployment of our troops today. Thus far:

There are 135,544 troops in Iraq today. 3127 or 2.3 percent of U.S. soldiers have been killed in service to our country.

Seventeen percent or 23,279 U.S. soldiers have been seriously wounded in service to our country.

Twenty percent of the troops wounded have received serious brain or spinal injuries; 30 percent of U.S. troops develop serious mental health problems within 3 to 4 months of returning home.

During the President's tenure, he has requested a cumulative total of more than $700 billion to pay for the war effort in Iraq; $9 billion of U.S. taxpayers money is unaccounted for.

The State of New York has lost 143 soldiers, 16 from Brooklyn. U.S. troops continue to die from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have been sent to Iraq with poorly constructed and poorly armored equipment. Pentagon war planners have created a high level task force that has spent $6.7 billion on how to combat IEDs.

Thousands of Americans are dead, thousand more will die if we don't get our troops home and get them redeployed today. I oppose the President's call for 21,000 more troops to go to Iraq. I support our troops and that's why I want them home where they belong.

Madam Speaker and my colleagues, the State of the Union?

Mr. President, we are on edge. The American public have said no to the war in Iraq and you have turned a deaf ear to this American admonition.

What does a troop escalation mean to American families?

More of our women and men, sons and daughters, brothers and sister, neighbors and friends will lose their lives or the life of someone they love, more families, such as the family of Operations Specialist Joseph Alomar, who gave his life in honor just this past week, and LCpl Nicholas Whyte, who gave his life this summer. More families, Mr. President, will be mourning. More of the American tax dollars will be spent on the war, rather than on building better schools, hospitals, roads and bridges.

Madam Speaker, in the 11th District of Brooklyn, New York, and in congressional districts around the country, Americans want our troops home.

Mr. President, end this war in Iraq. Redeploy our troops now. We need our domestic tranquility.

Mr. Speaker, it has been extraordinary.

To the gentleman from Florida, I would like to thank you for welcoming me and all of my colleagues with open arms, and just to say to you that it is very clear that the winds of change are

blowing here in the House of Representatives. And I find it just sort of ironic that the rhetoric does not necessarily match the outcome. We do see bipartisan voting taking place right now, and I think the American people need to know that this 110th Congress in the first 100 legislative hours today alone by a margin of 356-71 voted for cutting interest rates in student loans.

Now, if my recollection is clear, in the 109th Congress I doubt that that would have ever occurred. And I think that we need to give credit where credit is due, and credit is due to the winds of change that the people of the United States have made clear through their votes in the November election. We have heeded that very significantly in the first 96-odd hours of the 100 hour agenda, and we have done the American people good. We have done them good.

So I am excited about it. I am just a freshman from Brooklyn, New York, but I am trying to make my way, and I see that we have heeded the call and that we are active in pursuit of the mandates that the American people have set forth for us.

I would like to yield.

The gentleman is from Pittsburgh.

I thank the gentleman from Florida.

I just wanted to pick up on all the excitement. I think the velocity and the momentum that has been built in the 110th Congress is something that is reverberating around the Nation.

As I went back to my district over the King holiday weekend, the enthusiasm and just the whole buoyancy of how people feel about the work we have been doing, it is uplifting, quite frankly. I think we need to capture that and make sure we use that as a motivation to continue along this path.

Just think about going home to New York City and people talking about real homeland security. We passed legislation that directly impacted on the town from which I am from. And certainly as someone whose father was in the World Trade Center in the 1993 attack, we recognize how very serious it is to reapportion the formula based on risk.

And just last week we were able to make that adjustment. We were able to organize things so that we can address port security and first responders in a meaningful, tangible way based on risk. And that says a lot about how we are going to operate as a body.

Everyone in New York saw the formulas before as just some of the most overt political pandering that you could possibly do. But now we have restored to them the faith that we can do what we have been sent to do, which is to create policy that protects and that uplifts our Nation.

And so my hat is off to the leadership, Speaker Pelosi, and everyone who has really tapped into the pulse of the American people. Because when you talk about a minimum wage raise in a city like New York, where the cost of living has been something that has created such a gap in people's lives, where raising the minimum wage just enables them to get by, is extraordinary for the rest of our Nation. It is extraordinary for all of us.

And we have an obligation to continue along this path, in making sure that everything that the American people have demanded of us, and I think the 6 in 2006 has really made it tangible, addresses that in a forthright way. I feel really great about where we are right now, and I look forward to working with all of these gentlemen in a movement to really move our civil society to where it needs to be, to make that paradigm shift and focus us as one of the greatest nations of humankind.

Thank you very much to the gentleman from Connecticut for sharing that, because I can only say ``ditto.''

We are, I believe, doing what needs to be done for the future of the Nation. While we see the immediate impact because we were campaigning and there were certain issues that had come before us, when I look at the fact that 8th graders, who will be entering college in 5 years, will be paying half the interest rate that current college students are paying, we are making a substantive difference in people's lives. That could encourage that one student who was saying there is no way my family can afford it to say, you know what, I can make it. And that is what this is about, future generations.

I want to thank the leadership, Mr. Meek, Mr. Ryan, for giving us this forum in which we can reach out to the American people to come together in common cause with our colleagues, and even some of those folks on the other side of the aisle, to really do the work that is needed to be done for future generations. We have been doing it in the first 100 hours, and I look forward to doing it even more so as we move forward in the 110th session.

I yield to you, Mr. Ryan.