Trent Franks

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, on June 1 of 2009, only about a week ago, Private William Long, only 23 years old, was shot and killed as he worked at the Army Navy Career Center, which is a military recruitment center, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Private Quinton I. Ezeagwula, age 18, was also shot in the attack that day. Thankfully, Private Ezeagwula survived; although our latest information is that he remains still in critical condition. Mr. Speaker, most persons who are listening today are hearing about Private Long's death for the first time. It's likely that most Americans haven't heard of his killing because Private Long's murder forces the issue that the mainstream media does not want to confront or report on, and that is Islamic terrorism within and coming from within the United States. The man accused of shooting Private Long and Private Ezeagwula was formally known as Carlos Bledsoe. Bledsoe converted to Islam and changed his name to Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad. He later traveled to Yemen where he was there studying under an Islamic scholar. Yes, Mr. Speaker, we have millions of law-abiding Muslims in this country. Acts of terror committed by some members of a religion should never be used to condemn all members of that religion. At the same time, however, we cannot be blind to the jihadist ideology of some Muslims of this country who believe that they have a religious duty to murder the innocent. The mindset of radical Islamic terrorism which today seems to find fertile ground in the soil of jihad claims that the cause of justice is advanced by killing the innocent and by killing those who seek to protect the innocent. This is the fundamental reality. And when the American media and we, as a people, refuse to call evil by its name, it imperils us all and it dishonors all of those, like these two soldiers who have sacrificed and bled to protect the innocent from that evil. Mr. Speaker, the American soldier does not fight because he hates what's in front of him. He fights because he loves what is behind him. Private Long's so-called crime was his commitment to defending the innocent against those who would cause them and all of us harm. That commitment is the price required oftentimes to maintain our freedom. That commitment was carried deeply in the heart of Private William Long. He displayed it bravely by wearing the uniform of the United States armed services and dying in it for all of us. That commitment will forever be the legacy of his life on this Earth. Mr. Speaker, today there are approximately 1.2 million Reserve component members of the Armed Forces protecting America; more than 8,000 Army and Army Reserve recruiters; and more than 7,000 Navy recruiters serving at more than 1,500 military recruiting stations and centers in the United States, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Europe. This attack could have ended the lives of any one of those noble men and women. Each of them risks his or her life every single day to preserve America's freedom and to defend the right of every American to live free, to be free, and pursue their dreams. So today, Mr. Speaker, I've introduced House Resolution 515 to offer our deepest condolences to the family of Private William Long on behalf of the United States House of Representatives, to offer our hope of a full and complete recovery for Private Quinton Ezeagwula, and to urge the prosecution of the preparator of this senseless shooting to the fullest extent of the law, and finally, to urge the American people to join together in condemning such horrific acts of violence upon the noble men and women of our Armed Forces. We pray especially that the hearts of all of those that Private Long knew and loved would find comfort and peace in the knowledge that in dying, because he wore the uniform of the United States military, their loved one laid down his life for the sake of human freedom and on behalf of those who could not defend that freedom for themselves. No legacy could be more noble, Mr. Speaker. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, just a personal thought on my part. Sometimes a country oftentimes asks itself the question of what really is the source and fundamental essence of our security. And oftentimes, we think that that is the length and breadth of our military might, and I would only remind us all that thousands of years ago, China built the Great Wall to protect China. This was a wall that would have challenged some of our modern day tanks and they thought that they were completely secure, but in that time China was invaded three different times because the enemy simply bribed the guard who opened the gate and let them in. I would submit today that the greatest and most important factor for the freedom of a people is the commitment in the heart of its people, and especially those who put on the uniform, to be committed enough to stand in the way of the aggressor and their homeland. And that is exactly what Private Long and Private Ezeagwula tried to do. There is a verse that says, Greater love hath no man than this; that a man lay down his life for his friends. It is the most noble of all acts that we can accomplish on this Earth. Sometimes I think we forget how much some people give for the freedom that we have. Privates Long and Ezeagwula are good examples. Mr. Speaker, I think sometimes we also forget the price that families pay. You know, it is easy for us to focus upon only the fallen, but those who remain and the grief that is laid upon their broken shoulders is often sometimes something we cannot identify with. I was in the Press Club here a few days ago, and I saw a diamond- shaped picture of a cold, icy, windy day out at Arlington National Cemetery. A woman stood alone with her back to the viewer standing at a tombstone. There was no one else in the cemetery and the wind was blowing and her clothes were out to the side. It was the loneliest thing I had ever seen. And the title was simply, ``The Widow.'' Now, I understand that Private Long was not yet married, but I am sure there was someone out there that loved him, and I know that his parents loved him. And the family has faced a loss that none of us can even imagine. So as we salute Private Long, I also think it is in order to salute his family, who have paid such a high price so we can stand here in this Chamber and talk about freedom. Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 294 I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 292, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Yes. I'm convinced that it is. The danger, of course, is that Iran is not only a dangerous enemy, to have these types of weapons, but they can sell and proliferate this type of weaponry. And when they prove that it works, it makes the price go up and it makes other countries who are trying to gain this technology much more interested in the technology. And I believe that it's important that we do whatever is necessary to prevent them from having successful tests in the future, including--and this is a big statement--including shooting those missiles down with our own missile defense capability, our Aegis capability when they come over international waters.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. The tragedy--and this goes back to the statement that I said about the naive way of approaching this--because the Russians said that somehow they could exert influence over Iran or over other countries, that we would give up defending our homeland, our physical mechanism to defend our homeland in order to gain the influence of the Russians over Iran. Well, this is unbelievable.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Yes. The intercepter field itself, with 10 intercepters, it would have been in Poland.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. No. The radar site is in the Czech Republic. That was the X-10 radar there, and they went through tremendous political machinations to accomplish that overcoming a 2-1 dissent among their public. And yet they had the leadership to say, This is important to us, this is important to the world, and we're going to move forward. And they put tremendous capital in that, and now they're being betrayed by the country that asked them to do it.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Two things have happened since then. First of all, Democrats in Congress have begun to see that missile defense does indeed have a very, very important role to play in this age of nuclear proliferation. That's a good thing. It's a good thing. The downside, of course, is that the Democrat President in the White House right now is incredibly, in my judgment, naive as to the danger that we face and to his approach with our allies. He has now, under his budget, submitted numbers that would cut the European missile defense site by 89 percent, nearly 90 percent, which is effectively killing the program. And this was the system that we were putting in place under the Bush administration to protect the homeland of the United States, to protect Europe and our forward- deployed troops against an Iranian missile.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. The truth is that Ronald Reagan was, indeed, the father of modern missile defense. And there is a great irony there because, while we owe him everything, in a sense, to where we are, he said, Isn't it better to protect our citizens rather than to avenge them? And I thought that was the quote that, in my mind, started it all out. But the tragedy is that somehow now the modern-day liberals who disdain Ronald Reagan as much as they do, sometimes they are biased against missile defense simply because it was Ronald Reagan's idea. And we don't discuss it in the realm that it should be discussed, which is what is best for the country rather than we don't want to give Ronald Reagan too much credit. This is the ironic tragedy of it.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. That was the ABM Treaty that you speak of. And fortunately Bush, this last George Bush, was wise enough in this day and age recognizing that the coincidence of jihadist terrorism and nuclear proliferation gave us a different equation than we had with the Soviets because all of a sudden deterrence wasn't enough. We were dealing with an enemy that was willing to see their own children die in order to attack our children. And so he knew that we needed to discard this outdated ABM or antiballistic missile treaty, and he did that, and unfortunately, tremendous strides seemed to be made very quickly in the area of missile defense.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. When we came to having firearms and bullets, we came to find armor and came up with a tank, and it has been an ongoing back-and-forth for a long time. But now that we face the most dangerous weapons in the history of humanity--that being a nuclear warhead borne by an intercontinental ballistic missile which can reach thousands of miles with accuracy--all of a sudden there became a debate whether we needed a defense for something like that. Now, for a time, there wasn't really the technological ability to defend against something like that. And as you said, when the Soviets had thousands of warheads and hundreds of missiles that were capable of destroying every city that we had that was of any size, we had to come up with this equation to where they knew that if they attacked our cities and they killed our women and children, that our missiles would leave almost shortly after theirs left the launching pad and they would suffer the same fate. And it was such an unthinkable scenario that there was this grim achievement that said we will have mutually assured destruction and, therefore, each will be afraid to launch against the other. In a sense, as frightening as it was, it gave us a real tense time when we could have a chance to feel relatively safe because we placed our safety in their sanity, as they did with us.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Ostensibly, the whole purpose of cutting missile defense is so that we can use the money somewhere else. But sometimes we forget that when we suffer some type of weakness in our military system it invites or it provokes some type of attack from an enemy which nearly always costs us much more than any savings that we had. When airplanes hit our buildings and our Pentagon, they cost us in our total economy, around $2 trillion. And so this is not only bad defense. It's bad economics. And if some day, if we build a system and we don't need it, I will stand before the American public and say, you know, we used this system every day because it deterred an attack. But I'll still apologize to you for spending all the money. But God save us all from the day when we have to stand before the American people and apologize to them because some type of an attack left hundreds of thousands of our people dead in a city or worse and we had the ability to defend them and we didn't out of political correctness. And with that I yield back to the gentleman and thank him very much.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Unfortunately, the Russians have sold us their influence over Iran about a dozen times now and never have really given us anything of substance to be helpful. And I think this is incredibly dangerous. Iran has continued to go forward and defy the world community. This solid fuel rocket that they have used today is something that you said was very, very important. And the ability to stage is incredibly significant because it ultimately means that if they have the guidance systems--and they've already proven that they do by launching the satellite--that they will have almost an indefinite range across the world, because once they learn to stage, they can do almost anything in terms of reach.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. That is correct, and of course, the other irony here is that there's really only one payload that makes any sense to put on a missile like that, and that's a nuclear warhead. The other applications don't make a lot of sense.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. The airborne laser has been cut precipitously and is now essentially a research project, rather than a deployable future system.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. No, sir. The KEI is an extremely fast missile, and it was made to intercept other missiles in the boost phase, and the airborne laser and KEI were our only boost phase systems, and both of those have been cut precipitously, and that's the most important place to try to interdict a missile because it's moving slower. There are no countermeasures. There are no decoys deployed, and of course, if you have an impact, then the fratricide falls back upon the offending Nation. So this is the most important phase that we could ever attack or intercept an enemy missile, and we're essentially doing away with both of those programs, leaving only the ABL in place as an experiment, as a research project.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. The gentleman is correct on a number of different points. Once we don't build those, not only are they not there for the defense capabilities, but we also eventually lose our industrial base to build them at all. We can't just go out in the street and find someone on the sidewalk and say come on, we would like to build a missile defense capability; we'd like to have you come in and be one of our rocket scientists. It takes a great deal of time and energy to have that industrial base which is in place now, and I think we make a terrible mistake.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, the gentleman speaks of a system called GMD, or ground-based mid-course defense, and it is our only system capable of defending the homeland against an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile from either North Korea or, in some cases in the United States, from Iran. And the significance, as he said, just a year ago, there was a conviction that we needed at least 44 interceptors, and as you go through the war colleges here in the area, nearly always when they go through their scenarios, they say we need even more than the 44. But now all of the sudden--and we only have 26 actually now. We're capped at a number of 30. Now all of a sudden we're going to cap it at 30, and I think that's very dangerous. Because keep in mind, this is not just one interceptor per incoming missile. We want to do everything that we can to have some redundancy where we sometimes shoot three and perhaps even four to one where if we have one missile coming in, we want to make sure we get as many shots off as possible to make sure one doesn't land. Because if a nuclear missile lands in one of your cities, it will ruin your whole day.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, that's correct, and of course, to try to make the rhetoric they say, well, there are other mechanisms that we have potentially to defend Europe, which may be a land-based SM-3 system with the augment of Aegis, but there are two things wrong with that. Number one, it's more than twice as expensive to do that, and number two, those systems do not protect the homeland of the United States against any ICBM from Iran.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. If you will permit me, I can get through this just briefly. You know, the age-old argument against Ronald Reagan's perspective is that this like hitting a bullet with a bullet. Well, as General Obering, the former Defense agency head said this, he said, We don't just hit a bullet with a bullet. We hit a dot on the side of a bullet with a bullet consistently. And interestingly enough, in recent days, you know, now they say well, there's so much fratricide, if there's some type of collision, that if there are multiple reentry vehicles or multiple vehicles, we wouldn't be able to hit all of them. But just recently we, in a test down in Hawaii, we shot a Scud missile off of a destroyer and it went 218 kilometers into the air and then, off of a THAD battery in one of the islands there, we shot two interceptor missiles 16 seconds apart to try to intercept this. The theory is if the first one hits, the second one will fly on by, and it's no big deal. If the first one misses, the second one will hit. But here is the amazing thing that occurred. At 218 kilometers into the air, literally exo-atmospheric, into space, the first THAD interceptor hit the target dead center and blew it to smithereens. Fratricide was everywhere. And the second missile, they had it almost coordinated at that time to only 2 seconds apart, it picked the biggest piece, which was a little over a meter long, and hit it. Now, let me suggest to you, if that doesn't light your fire, your wood is wet, because this was an incredible accomplishment by our missile defense agency, and it showed that our sensors have the capability of finding that most important target, even in an environment of that kind of fratricide, and it was an incredible accomplishment and you didn't hear it on the news.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. The thing that's important to remember is that Iran gained most of its missile technology from North Korea, and Iran has actually outpaced North Korea now in their missile capability, but North Korea has nuclear warheads now, and if North Korea sold Iran missile technology, is it unthinkable to think they might sell them nuclear warheads at some point? It may not be even necessary for Iran to build their own warheads. And here's the really astonishing tragedy about this. Rhetorically, some of the liberals say that the reason that we should cut our GMD system is because we need more testing. Well, under this system, where they're cutting down on the number of interceptors we have, we won't be able to test this system again until after 2014.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. That's exactly right.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. This is a Sager, a solid fuel rocket that is something that we've known about for some time, and we knew the Iranians had it and at some point they would test it. But the danger of--

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I appreciate what you're doing here tonight, Congressman Akin. Ever since mankind took up arms against his fellow human beings, there has always been an offensive capability that essentially, in time, has been met with the defensive capability. And first it was the sword or the spear and the shield, maybe, and then--