Neil Abercrombie

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I wish to add an addendum to the last point the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) made when he talked about the no-show jobs. The problem we have in the United States now is people are showing up and there are no jobs. They want to have a job. We have lost two-plus million jobs, manufacturing jobs, in this country. There are plenty of people who want to show up for work, but the work is not there because it is being out sourced overseas. Because we are providing an opportunity for the Vice President's cronies in Halliburton and all these other construction companies to send mercenaries overseas to make the big dollars off of the taxpayer dollar here. I want to see people at work in the United States. When we have a prosperous United States, we can start worrying about carrying the burden for the rest of the world.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, as President Bush is so fond of saying, help is on the way. Let me read from the Wall Street Journal of yesterday: A consortium of 13 international banks, lead by J.P. Morgan Chase and company, was chosen to lead the newly created Trade Bank of Iraq. I thought it was going to be the United States was going to get some help. No, we have J.P. Morgan and 13 international banks, and they are going to put together something called the Trade Bank of Iraq. The coalition authority that I just referred to, the 25-member coalition authority which is now in charge of finance, according to the New York Times, in Iraq created the Trade Bank to allow Iraqi ministries to begin making ``big ticket purchases abroad.'' This is all a corporate scam and the country has to wake up to the fact that we are utilizing our young men and women in harm's way in the military uniform of the United States to carry out the corporate interests of this administration, and that Iraq, if not before now, is a quicksand of corporate endeavor on behalf of profit-taking by corporations utilizing the all-volunteer force of the United States, and we have to take seriously whether or not we are going to allow it to continue. My view is, and I put it forward for consideration, that if we are going to deal with this situation straightforwardly, we have to talk about letting this 25-member authority take over. They say they are in charge of finance, they are in charge of security, they are in charge of trade, they are in charge of banking, in charge of oil, let them be in charge. Bring the American troops on out of there and let that Iraqi authority set the terms and conditions under which the United Nations will come in and help put this together. I am perfectly willing to vote funds because we caused this problem, funds that will enable the Iraqi people to get back on their feet, provided it is done in an international context at the behest of and request of the Iraqi authority which we supposedly have not only set up but now have in charge of these various ministries.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. None. Zero.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I do not wish to dispute who is ready and who is not. All we can account for is ourselves. We were not ready, and now these poor people have to bear the brunt of our failure to be ready. I understand that. But the question here that I have raised here is what in fact is the role of the United States and these troops? How do we make it work? Let me put it this way, that is not an argument. In my dreams I keep thinking Thomas Edward Lawrence, where are you, come back. Lawrence, come back and tell us what it is we are forgetting. What do we think we can do when people made an argument back in World War I that the Arabs were not ready. This was a Western concept. This is people coming in from the outside telling somebody else that they were not ready. They were not ready to have the French divide up and the English divide up Iraq for their political purposes, but they were certainly ready to do whatever it was that they felt was necessary. I am sure that the colonial armies under George Washington were not ready. Cornwallis was wandering all over, wandering through Maryland and New Jersey, wandering through upstate New York; and back in England they said, We have got to get out. It does not matter whether they are ready or not. We are going to be adrift with our people being picked off one by one in the American Revolutionary War. We are facing the same kind of situation in terms of the material prospect for the military of the United States in Iraq today. It is not up to us to decide whether or not they are ready. Let me tell what one of the members of the governing council said yesterday. Abdel Aziz Hakim, the brother of Ayatollah Hakim who was killed in the car bomb, a member of the United States appointed governing council to which I have referred this evening told mourners, and I quote, and this is from The Washington Post of yesterday, ``The occupation force is primarily responsible for the pure blood that was spilled in holy Najaf, the blood of Hakim and the faithful group that was present near the mosque. Iraq must not remain occupied and the occupation must leave so we can build Iraq as God wants us to do.'' My point is we are dealing with a situation in which we do not have the prerogative of decisionmaking other than what we do about ourselves and for ourselves. We cannot decide for others. If the argument was, and again I do not want to dispute that because we have Members on this floor who voted for the resolution, who did not vote for the resolution who had different ideas what that resolution meant or did not mean, that is not an issue. I have no intention of pointing fingers and extracting some kind of admissions about what might have been the true faith at the time. What I am saying is we now face a situation in which we have to make a determination whether our continued presence is a positive or negative force and what should constitute our continued presence.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, not only was that well stated, not only was the logistics of the politics well stated, but the sentiments expressed by yourself and by the previous speakers take us then to the question of what are we to do? The difficulty I think that has been faced by those of us who had reservations, if not outright opposition, to the attack on Baghdad, which is what the initial military activity was, because we feared that a war in Iraq would then erupt, one for which we were not prepared, I think the difficulties associated with the thrust of their remarks made to this point is that the American people said, well, where is this opposition, what does it mean, why are we not coming forward with it? We were drowned, literally, in the rhetorical excesses and visual stimulus of embedded media, following along with and literally with the troops. We were regaled with admonitions to support the troops by virtue of not questioning the policies that sent those troops in in the first place, and not analyzing the context and circumstances under which those troops were placed in harm's way. And I do not think we can avoid that any longer. How are we to deal with the analysis of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) regarding the circumstances under which we entered and what has taken place? How are we to deal with the questions raised by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) about the deficits, about the costs that are associated, the literal costs? How are we to deal with the elegant formulation by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) of the juxtaposition between that which is required for us in the United States to deal with our basic needs and that which is required for the Iraqi people under the circumstances over which we now, ostensibly, have control and obligation? What are we to do? The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) and I, earlier this evening, engaged in a discussion with one another about, well, how should we address this question? And I think, if my colleague will allow me just a moment or two more, I want to posit what I think needs to be done or at least what needs to be done in terms of a dialogue. We established a governing cabinet which, according to The New York Times yesterday, is the Iraqi Governing Council. It says we have right now, and by we I am talking about the so-called coalition, because that is all it is. There may be some attendance on the periphery, but we have Great Britain, and we have the United States. Great Britain is now going through the throes of its own investigations and self-analysis. Who knows how long the Prime Minister will even be in office, let alone the support there. But it says we now have an Iraqi Governing Council, I am quoting The New York Times from yesterday, ``appointed a 25-member cabinet today to begin taking over day-to-day control of the government. The Iraqi ministers appointed today are to take over important portfolios in foreign affairs, finance, internal security and oil.'' Now, my suggestion is if that is in fact the case, and if one accepts the premise for discussion sake that the motives for going into Iraq were sound, even if the process and the planning was inadequate at best, then this has been achieved. There was an attack on Baghdad. There was an occupation that took place. We now have a 25-member governing council to take over all of these areas. When are we going to bring the troops home? The same paper announces, the same news media announces yesterday that two U.S. military officers have died, another wounded when their Humvee hit a bomb along a highway in southern Baghdad. The military police brigade was traveling along a main supply route at 3:19 p.m. in the afternoon when their vehicle hit ``an improvised explosive device.''

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, as we stand here speaking, airplanes are coming in every day and every night discharging the wounded. When we can manage to get people acknowledged in the newspaper or on the television as having been killed in Iraq, and I say when we manage to get them acknowledged because more and more this is fading from the front page, this is fading from the A section of the newspaper. We have to pay attention to ex-steroid users running for governor out in California. We are competing with that right now. The clown show is taking place on C-SPAN II right now. Maybe tonight we can forgive the fact that the media once again are not here to record what might be said or not said here with respect to Iraq and its implications because they are watching the clown show. It is no clown show at Bethesda Naval Hospital. It is no clown show at Walter Reed Hospital, where now the grievously wounded are in the thousands. I suppose one could make an argument if it was in the dozens that it might be more acceptable. But it is not. We have the spectacle of the President of the United States now backtracking from the show that he put on on the aircraft carrier, that shameless display of arrogance and hubris. Oh, that was the end of major combat operations. So the family to which my colleague referred, are they supposed to take some comfort with the idea that their son died in a minor confrontation, a minor incident? There is nothing minor about the deaths and grievous wounding of American men and women in combat in Iraq.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. And the ones who will pay the price of that attitude should it become more pervasive, ``death to America,'' is not going to be us here. They are getting ready to celebrate. Come on. They are closing down the mall tomorrow. For those of you out there tuning in, they are closing down the mall tomorrow because the National Football League is getting underway. The Redskins are going to play. No traffic. People are taking days off. They are taking sick leave, whatever it is. They are closing down the mall, not because of a terrorist threat but because the Washington Redskins are going to start the National Football League and that is what we are going to concentrate on. And what do you think will be on the front page of The Washington Post on Friday morning? Whether or not the Redskins won the game. But will there be a story about two more kids getting wounded or killed over in Baghdad or Tikrit or some other godforsaken place that nobody knows anything about and cannot spell? Let me tell you what has happened, how much we care about this supporting the troops. If I hear that one more time from these hypocrites. The toughest thing we have ever done since 9/11, which is coming up in a couple of days, the biggest sacrifice we ever made is not the inconvenience of taking off your shoes walking through a testing device at the airport, we postponed the Super Bowl for 1 week. That is the big sacrifice. We are supposedly in a total war. The President tells me that I am in a war, a total war, over maybe 10 years and we are going to go and we are going to conduct this war with every fiber that we have. We are not doing anything of the kind. We are watching the football game on television. When I see those guys out on the field, I see there is a kid from Ohio State, he cannot decide whether he wants to go to class or not. He does not know whether it is worth it. I do not blame him. They are marketing him over there. They are making a million dollars out of him. We are worried about whether some professional basketball player took advantage of a young woman and we are going to spend more money and time on that. They are all pretty healthy, it looks to me. Why are they not in uniform over there? Why do we not have a draft if we really mean that this is a war against terror and this is something that we have to fight right through to the end with all the resources of the United States? That is what I cannot bear. I cannot bear the idea that we sit here, 435 of us that have been designated on the trust and faith of our constituents to try and make good judgments. We do not have a referendum in here in this country. This is not something where we just run out and take a vote on the fashion of the moment. We are supposed to be trying to use what brains that God gave us and what judgment we have been able to accrue over the experiences of our lifetime and, based on the faith and trust of our constituents, render responsible policies and obligations for this country. What I am saying is that these young men and women have volunteered for the armed services of the United States not because we expect them to throw their lives away on the political fashion of the moment, but because we expect to be able to provide them with the necessities of being able to carry through on the strategic interests of this Nation. I say that the strategic interests of this Nation now requires us to have an exit plan out of Iraq and to turn the question of Iraq and its governance over to the Iraqis as soon as possible so that they can make the necessary arrangements with the United Nations, of which we are a part, in order to aid and assist them.

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

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, this is about money, money, piles of money, oodles of money, tons of money. This is what this is about. You do not have to worry about safety because if you cannot afford the drug in the first place, you are not even going to get it to take it, and if you are a Democrat, a minority Democrat, and you do not vote for this bill, there is not any Democrat in the country that is not going to say you sold out and you rolled over belly up again and you are not standing up for the people of this country. We deserve to be in the minority if we cannot pass this bill. We are defying everything that makes us Democrats, and if you are a Republican, then they are going to say you are in the pockets of the big pharmaceuticals again and you are just acting like a Republican. If you are a Republican or Democrat, vote this bill through and save the integrity of this House.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

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

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. No question of it.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Madam Speaker, I have mentioned it down here before. I said that we are going to bring the hammer of truth down on the anvil of inquiry, and this is resonating across the country; and we have mentioned here before that in this Iraq Watch that we are doing we have to do it after hours, during Special Orders, because we are not having the opportunity to do this. The press galleries, I will say again, are empty here this evening. We cannot have anybody from these big networks that are trying to make sure that they do not cross the Federal Communications Commission. They all want to be able to consolidate even more, own even more of what message gets out there. The press is not covering the outrage that is taking place across this country with respect to the points that the gentleman from Illinois is raising. If my colleagues will go to moveon.org, we will find that there are over 300,000 people right now across this country who have indicated that they want an independent commission to look into all the questions, all the inquiry that is being raised in these sessions that we are having in this Iraq Watch, 300,000 people and growing. That does not get the coverage. It is the kind of grassroots movement, the net- roots if you will, that is taking place all across this country, that says we are not going to take it, our democracy is not going to be taken away from us by some self-appointed elitists who have an anti- imperialist attitude about what the United States is going to be or not be and that we are going to be informed about it later and that the sons and daughters of those elitists will never have to pay the price in blood and treasure that it takes to impose that imperialist vision on the world. I will tell my colleagues that all across this country men and women are realizing they do not have to take it. They can do something about it. They are letting us know about it. Our colleagues have been reading on the floor of this House in some of the shorter special sessions message letters. They are reading communications that are coming in from the moveon.org petition drive from all over the country, in every State, in every nook and corner of this country, people who do not want to be lied to. You can fool people. There is no doubt you can fool people, but you cannot keep it up and you cannot get away with it forever. People do not mind facing up to hard truths. Like Ronald Reagan said, facts are stubborn things. People do not mind facing up to it. They do not want to be lied to, they do not want to be finessed, they do not want to be fooled, and they do not want to be played with; and we need to bring this truth forward, and that is why we better have this commission or let me tell my colleagues, this administration and the elitists that support it are going to pay a fearful price.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I certainly have.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Naturally, you turn to me when you ask for that. Mr. HOEFFEL. That will show you to come late for Iraq Watch. Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I was letting you get warmed up. Mr. EMANUEL. This was his senior high school thesis.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. The question that you pose and was answered rhetorically with another series of questions, really observations by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), I think bear answering. I think there is an answer and it is an unfortunate answer. It has nothing to do with plots and conspiracies, but it has everything to do with a philosophy and an attitude and an ideology which has been expressed again and again by some of the people that have been mentioned here earlier this evening. If you take a look at the spectrum of essays and books and articles written by those who were now in charge of policy in the administration, Mr. Krystol's book on the mission in Iraq, our mission in Iraq, Mr. Perle, Mr. Booth, some of the think tanks here in Washington, these nonprofit, untaxable think tanks that operate thanks to the tax loopholes that we have which allow them to operate and comment and infest themselves in halls of government. There are more than one set of interest groups in this town, let me state, and some of them are in charge of this policy. So the answer, I am sorry to say, in my judgment is this has been a clearly articulated policy of people now associated with the administrations who were determined to start a war in Iraq, to include Syria and Iran, because of the policies that they feel this country should be not only espousing but pursuing in terms of world domination beginning in the Middle East. So it is clear, even with the publishing of the documentation now over the weekend, that the bombing that took place for perhaps a year or more before the actual launching of the attack on Baghdad was following a pattern to try to knock out selected targets in Iraq before the formal hostilities in terms of an attack actually started. So I think I am forced to conclude, and this is why I think the idea of having an independent investigation committee is so important, I am forced to conclude that there was a pattern already being articulated publicly and in writing to set this Nation on a course of imperial attack beginning with Iraq. Mr. HOEFFEL. We wanted to hear from the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), but it looks like the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) has 60 seconds here. Mr. EMANUEL. I wanted to make two closing comments on my side on this point. One, I think we have a serious problem with North Korea. There is no doubt North Korea is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, and unless America's word and its credibility can be trusted, our ability to muster the international community's outrage and capability to handle this will be questioned. Unfortunately, the President's State of the Union has called the question of our credibility and our ability to muster in the international community when it says this was an immediate threat. I think the American people, unfortunately, because of this now, are exhausted in dealing with the international crisis which we will have to do. Secondly, what I want to report and talk about in this group is dealing with the cost. We are paying $1 billion a week for the occupation of Iraq. There was a story two nights ago, four nights ago on the nightly news of how our troops are now organizing soccer teams in Iraq and sports in Iraq for the young. We have cut programs here dealing with Title IX which is under attack in this country. Mr. DELAHUNT. I can tell my friend that there are sports programs that are being cut in my district back home in south shore Cape Cod. Mr. EMANUEL. I would like to say to all of my colleagues that there is not a Member in this body who does not have playgrounds in their district that are badly in need of repair. We are literally for sports teams. Now, I am for the reconstruction of Iraq. I have no problem. I just find it interesting that our military, who are never going to be involved in a mamsy-pamsy activity of nation building are out organizing soccer leagues and soccer clubs in Iraq, and yet playgrounds in America go dilapidated. Swings do not get fixed. Youth clubs are not organized in the United States. Title IX is under attack here in America. And we are paying a billion dollars a week in Iraq. I have said this before on the floor. We have a plan for 20,000 units of housing in Iraq. The President's budget has only 5,000 units of affordable housing here in the United States planned. We have 13 million Iraqis; we are thinking about providing universal health care to half the population. We have 45 million Americans without health insurance who work full time in this country. I have no problem, Americans have been since World War II and prior to that, one of the most generous people in the world, yet, if you offer them a smaller vision here at home for themselves and their children, their generosity will come into question. Mr. DELAHUNT. I think we all agree with the gentleman, but at the same time you are not factoring in the $250 million a week that we are paying to occupy Afghanistan and provide security and stability here. So would you please aggregate the sum from now on? Mr. EMANUEL. The aggregate sum would be $4.2 million a month. Mr. DELAHUNT. This is not for reconstruction efforts. Mr. EMANUEL. This is just for occupation efforts and our troops overseas. And that totals well over $50 billion a year for our foreign efforts. I want to say this, members of our body, Democrats, have a Rebuild America account for investment in highways, bridges, investments in sewers and water treatment. All that would lead to greater economic development. It costs $50 billion. Now, I have adequately indicated to the sponsors of that legislation that when we come up to authorizing the supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan, that we should attach the Rebuild America to the Iraqi reconstruction project. If we are going to pay $50 billion for Iraq over a year, I have got $50 billion I think we can find investments here in the United States. And there is not a Member in this body whose district does not need economic investment in the areas of a new road, new mass transit, new water treatment facilities. Again, the occupation of Iraq is essential now that we are there. But we cannot deinvest and deconstruct America in the word of reconstructing Iraq. Mr. HOEFFEL. We are also aware of the gentleman's American parity act which we are all cosponsors of.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I do not want to raise a new issue, Madam Speaker, but I do want to reiterate the idea of inquiry and how important that is. Because what we are doing can easily be dismissed by those who want to color it with a brush that has politics all over it, and that is not what this is about. It is not about politics in the sense that we are trying to make some particularly partisan point. I notice in the photographs coming from the rehabilitation wards right here in Washington, DC that the young men and women who have been grievously wounded are not identified as Republicans and Democrats or supporters of a particular policy or not. These are the people that have had to pay the price for other people's arrogance. These are the people that have had to pay the real price. We are not paying any price here. We all know that someone else will occupy these slots one day. I learned that the first time I was elected when I went to the office to which I was assigned and I realized they slid the names off the door. They were not screwed on, painted on; they came right off the door. We occupy that only so long as we have the faith and trust of the people of this country. That is what is at stake here. That is what this inquiry is all about. Is our faith and trust being played fast and loose with? That is the issue that is involved. That is why I want to say that as far as I am concerned, we are going to continue these inquiries. This Iraq Watch I hope perhaps can come out into the country, maybe off the floor of the Congress and perhaps go elsewhere. I would be very pleased to take this inquiry perhaps into a town meeting-kind of context anywhere in the Nation so that we can break out of the stranglehold on opinion that is taking place right now. We cannot trust the national media to do it. They are in the grip of the people who own the networks. We cannot trust them. We have to trust the people out there. And so I hope that perhaps with Iraq Watch, we can go elsewhere and go directly to the people, and we can get streaming on the Internet and follow through and let people judge for themselves on the people's network that is out there. Mr. HOEFFEL. I think that is a wonderful suggestion. Mr. INSLEE. A brief comment. I went and visited with two Marines who had some pretty significant wounds at Bethesda awhile back serving in Iraq. One was crushed by a tank and one was shot. I just think that those gentlemen understood the value of democracy and what we are here today is to say the Congress needs to understand the value of democracy, and democracy does not work where the executive branch of the United States Government does not level with its own people. I have one question for our next week that I hope we would have answered. Why did the White House in the run-up to the war in Iraq not seek CIA approval before the President of the United States went to the Rose Garden and charged that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes as administration officials now say? That is a question every American deserves an answer to, and the best way to do it is through Republicans and Democrats working together; and I hope this commission does that. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for his leadership.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

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

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Again in furtherance of what the gentleman from Illinois has indicated and others here this evening, these are the same questions that many of us asked of President Clinton. This is not something that has suddenly sprung into being. And they were asked in a bipartisan basis, too. My colleagues will remember that some of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, had these same questions for President Clinton with respect to Kosovo, with respect to the activities that took place in the Balkans. We had these same questions of ourselves as to what was expected of us. I think that as a result, what the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) has indicated is perhaps a start for us in terms of the questions that need to be asked, I think, needs a bit of reiteration. I find it very strange that when President Carter was in office, people in the media, particularly Nightline, would come on every evening, day 292 of the hostages and the number of hostages that were still in Iran, on day 292, three, four, five, 300, whatever it was. Yet we go now to casualties, deaths, we are not talking about those that are maimed, and this casual dismissal by some of the, I am sorry to say, some of the highest officials in the administration now of, well, this is all over, intelligence changes from day to day. You never know what it is from day to day, this almost sarcastic dismissal of these questions. There are young people out at Walter Reed right now who may not have been killed, a casualty in that sense, but they are surely there as casualties, with loss of limbs and a lifetime in front of them of having to deal with the pain and suffering of grievous wounds. Perhaps Nightline might take up this idea. It is day, what number, since the President said that the war was over. This is not something that we said. This is not something that other people said. This is something the President declared, and some of us have been challenged on our patriotism and challenged on our support for troops because we are not sufficiently quiet, because we do not acknowledge that the so-called ending of the war really ended. It does not end when somebody dies. It does not end when somebody is grievously wounded. It does not end when a parent or loved one has to try and understand and we have to explain when we go home why the war is over but the killing goes on and the maiming goes on. So I think we are going to need to have some accounting as to how many days past the end of the war the killing and the maiming goes on and what those numbers are. Because those numbers are real. They are not philosophical abstractions. They are not merely the recitation of numbers from an Office of Management and Budget or a Congressional Budget Office, some entity, some institution that has no reality to the mothers and fathers and the loved ones of those who have to bear the brunt of the policies that we in the government of the United States are bringing forward to the people of the United States as being in the strategic interests of this Nation. So I think that the questions that are being asked are not just questions about the past and how something happened but to try and understand what took place in the past so that we do not continue to make the same mistakes and the same observations that lead to this kind of grievous result.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, on that point in reference to what the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) said and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) observed to kick off this discussion, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) can see, his question was so pertinent that we have not gotten much further in it, and for good reason, because it requires some explication. The problem is here, if we do not do this, is a credibility gap. What will the President be able to say about North Korea? What will he be able to say about the Philippines? What will he be able to say about Colombia? What will he be able to say further about Afghanistan? Afghanistan seems to have disappeared; yet I know there were two attacks yesterday, one on the American base and one on U.N. personnel. I do not believe anybody was killed, but who knows? Now we are told there are more attacks in Iraq than necessarily are being reported. I suppose that gets quotidian now. If they are on the 11 o'clock news at night, they have got fires to report, they have assaults to report or basketball players or the latest boxer to embarrass himself or something of that nature. They hardly have time to fit in anymore how many people got killed today. It is almost a loss leader in the news. And so if we do not have some answers here, if the President does not take control and stop being dismissive of these questions as merely revising history or some other sarcastic observation, he is not going to be able nor will the administration be able to convince others who may find it in their interest to join with us in other circumstances. He will not be able to find anyone who is going to be willing to take us at our word. That is why this is so serious. It is way beyond partisan. Other people will occupy these seats down here. Other people will come to occupy our place. We are here only as long as the faith and trust of the people in our constituencies are willing to put us here. No one owns a seat in this Congress. No one owns a seat at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue either. We are only as good as the credibility with our own people before we can hope to influence others.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) have asked some questions not just for rhetorical effect, but which throw some light on some very interesting aspects of this whole dilemma, which the Secretary of Defense says is over with, which the National Security Adviser says we have to move on from. I am asking why. Who committed these forgeries? I keep hearing about it. I keep asking the questions. We cannot get anybody in front of us to answer the questions. Who committed these forgeries? The word ``forgery,'' the phrase is used all the time; but there does not seem to be the slightest inclination to find out what was at stake. Did they appear by spontaneous combustion? Was this an immaculate conception of forgery? I do not think so. There were reasons for it. Now we see the aspect of the Sunday talk shows. They are very interesting these days. Turn off the sound and watch the eyes and the expressions of the people who are speaking. Just watch that. Get the body language down, and Members will see the tension that is there because they do not want to answer the question who benefited from having this kind of an observation in that speech by the President. It has nothing to do with 16 words or a single sentence. It has everything to do with the reasons behind that being recommended to the President. This is not an accusation against the President. We are not going to determine that down here tonight as to what the President did or did not do with respect to that speech. The President is having a difficult enough time as it is other than to say it was somebody else's fault. That is something that we can take up with the President when it comes to election time, but that is not the issue here. The issue here is who and what was behind the insistence that that sentence and that that observation go into that speech. I think the answer is out there. I think what is involved in that answer has to do with who benefited from it.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, I know it is the intention of the Chairman and leadership to expedite the casting of votes. I have risen on the floor in the past speaking on behalf of those, particularly in the Longworth Building, to request that we make some attempt either by way of signage, blinking lights sufficient to be able to attract attention. I am not sure of the precise manner, but it is virtually impossible during these months when we are being visited with the number of people that are in the buildings, particularly in Longworth, to make use of those elevators to get here in a timely fashion. No Member wants to try to tell members of the public to get off elevators or not to come in. They make inquiries and so on, as they should. It is simply unfair to them. We have got to figure out a way to make at least one elevator eligible for exclusive use by the Members during the time in which a vote is taking place. Simply to ring the bells and then expect people to know what that means, let alone to be able to follow up on it during the 15- or 16- or 17-minute period, is impossible. I guarantee you, you are going to have people, as has happened recently and almost happened again today, that are going to miss votes and be upset about it, unless we are able to figure out some way to figure out the logistics associated with that.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I yield to the gentleman from California.

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

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. It is a common mistake, Mr. Chairman.