Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think that is one of the things that we as a Nation need to recognize. I was on a TV program earlier today and someone asked me what are you guys accomplishing, or who is responsible. I said, well, obviously, there is plenty of blame to go around. But not only is it the executive branch, and by executive branch I mean generic, not this President, because I agree with my colleague, this President has shown the leadership that is necessary to fight this war on terrorism, not only is there blame to go around in Congress, but there is also a certain responsibility of the American people. Because our actions sometimes are too often guided by public opinion. And for folks to say, well, you should have done more in 1998 or you should have done more in 2001, the real question is do we really think that the American people would have embraced it. We know that even after 2001 some of them have been restrained in their support or been openly hostile to going after al Qaeda and going after bin Laden and going into Afghanistan. The other thing is my colleague and I both probably know that the quickest ticket to unemployment in Congress is to show any interest in foreign affairs. One goes on a trip and learns more about the Middle East or whatever, and it is, oh, you do not care about us back home anymore. The American people bear some of that responsibility because we are the world's sole superpower economically and politically and militarily. That carries an awesome responsibility with it. I think it is one of the great cases for federalism. This place should focus on national security. It should focus on international trade agreements and our relationships with the rest of the world. Many other issues ought to be dealt with on a State and local level. We have a tremendous responsibility to address these issues.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, I love the analogy of play the ball where it lies because that is exactly what President Bush did after 9/ 11. He went back and took a look at what capabilities we had and the threats that were out there, but never went back to try to assess blame on something that happened 5 or 6 years ago or the Deutsch Doctrine that gutted our human intelligence. When we should have built intelligence up in the mid-1990s, it was gutted. That is exactly what happened when we get to 2001 and here we are in 2004 and we would like to have a human intelligence capability, we say, God, where did it go? We scrubbed it because we got rid of all the bad guys in 1995 and 1996 who spied for us. And one can say, well, when we are dealing with a terrorist organization, the only people that are in terrorist organizations are bad folks to begin with. But that is not where the President was. He took a look at 9/11, took a look at where we were strategically, militarily, and what we needed to get done, and went forward, never trying to pin blame anywhere but just said, hey, I am playing it where it lies. We will look at how it got here to make sure it does not happen again in the future, but I am not going back and say that guy took a bad swing or he sliced it or whatever; I am going to take it and move it forward. Because, again, I think in some ways Americans are getting a little lackadaisical. There is a real threat out there. And this President and this administration, and I hope Congress in a bipartisan way, stay focused on the threat that is out there and put in place a strategy to fix it.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague; and I hope he recovers his voice soon. We would miss it if he lost his voice. There is a lot of stuff that has happened in what we have talked about. There are a couple of other documents that I just want to talk about, and we have talked a little bit about rewriting history. There was some testimony just from the last couple of days in front of the joint inquiry; and it really I think in many ways, from my perspective, boils down to partisan politics, partisan politics at its worst. Because national security is too important an issue to take down into the partisan battleground, and it is one of the very positive things about serving on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. There have been a couple of things in the last few weeks that have been disappointing, but, by and large, the commitment by members of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is to do their work aggressively, effectively, but to leave the partisan labels at the door and to recognize that the issues that we are working on are too important to drag down into a short-term, partisan, political game because, at the end, the country loses. Here is what Dick Clarke said. The Bush administration decided in late January to do two things: one, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings. The point is, while this big review was going on, the lethal findings were still in effect. The second thing the administration decided to do was to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided, and that is in August of 2002. In the spring of 2001, the Bush administration began to change Pakistani policy by a dialogue that said we would be willing to lift sanctions. So we began to offer carrots which made it possible for Pakistanis I think to begin to think that they could go down another path, which was to join us and break away from the Taliban. So that is really how it started. A few minutes ago, we talked about the victory and the progress we have made in Libya. Back in 2001, the Bush administration, before 9/11, was talking about changing the policy in Pakistan to forge that partnership which then and now has enabled us. I met with the head of the Pakistani intelligence agency just a few weeks ago, right when they were sending a number of troops into their tribal areas, and they had lost a number of Pakistani troops. But who would have thought maybe even 2 or 3 years ago that by 2004 that the Pakistanis would not only be cooperating in our war on terrorism but they would be sending their own troops into these regions to find al Qaeda, to find the leadership of al Qaeda and to help us take out the Taliban and al Qaeda elements that were seeking refuge in Pakistan. Again, I had a question today about when Condoleezza Rice and the President and this administration had really provided unprecedented support for the subcommittee that I served on in the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that did a review almost directly after 9/11, provided full support and access to the joint House-Senate inquiry and now to the independent Commission. This is a statement that the Commission made on March 30. ``The Commission welcomes the decision of the President and the Vice- President to meet in one joint private session with all 10 commissioners. ``We also commend the President for his decision to accept the Commission's request for public testimony, under oath, by the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Dr. Condoleezza Rice.'' Remember, Dr. Rice had already testified to this Commission for 4 hours in private session. ``These decisions represent a significant contribution by the President to the work of the Commission, consistent with our mandate to `provide a full and complete accounting' of the terrorist attacks of September 11. ``The President has consistently stated a policy of strong support for the Commission and instructed the executive branch to provide unprecedented extraordinary access to the Commission.'' This is what the Commission said. ``The President has consistently stated a policy of strong support for the Commission and instructed the executive branch to provide unprecedented and extraordinary access to the Commission. His decisions today reflect that policy of strong support, and we welcome them.'' The Commission recognizes what is going on and that the President's support has been unprecedented, and we have got to remember that this is not looking back in history and saying, well, what happened during the war on terrorism. We are still fully engaged in the war on terrorism. We are still in the middle of fighting that war, and what is unprecedented about this President's cooperation is that there have already been I think 20 witnesses from the executive branch in front of the Commission. Now Dr. Condoleezza Rice has already testified in private, will now testify in public, but the public nature of this reviewing the decision-making process at the very time we are still conducting the war, not when it is done, but at the very time, digging into the inner reaches of an administration and asking about how they are conducting policy, how they are making decisions, and it is one thing to do it in private. It is another to do it fully in public. Someone asked me earlier this week and said in some ways I think the administration has gone almost too far. We are at war and the information is provided in private or secret session to those folks who are entrusted to make the decisions and the recommendations that enable this country to move forward responsibly, aggressively and effectively, but I sometimes worry that there are some in the world today who take comfort and believe that they are being successful in their efforts to defeat us in this war on terrorism when they see the partisanship that we sometimes are engaged in. This issue is too big to move down into partisanship. The last comment that I wanted to make is today I talked with one of our soldiers today who was back from Iraq. I have met with the family of one of our soldiers who was killed in Iraq. I have met with the family of one of our soldiers who was very badly wounded in an incident. In each of those cases, they have said, make sure that we win this war on terrorism, that we dedicate the resources to this war on terrorism. But they also said, do not forget the sacrifices of the families that have been asked to sacrifice, the families that have seen a son and husband gone for a year, the family that has seen a father and a husband and a son killed on a battlefield in Iraq and the family of the son and the husband of a soldier who has been badly wounded and will live with that for the rest of his life. But I think we need to remember all of these folks and the troops that are still serving over there, and I hope that we as a Nation, that we as a Congress, continue to remember these families and these individuals in our prayers.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, maybe my colleague heard the quote that I read from candidate for Vice President Al Gore talking about the first Bush administration where he said, ``He had already launched poison gas attacks repeatedly. Bush looked the other way. He had already conducted extensive terrorism activities and Bush had looked the other way.'' Can one imagine what would happen if we pulled out of Iraq and pulled out of the war on terrorism and the next terrorist attack occurred and somebody would come to us and say excuse me, they attacked the World Trade Centers, you looked the other way. They attacked our barracks, you looked the other way. They attacked the Cole, you looked the other way. They attacked our embassies, you looked the other way. They attacked the Trade Centers a second time and took them down, they attacked the Pentagon and you guys looked the other way. What were you guys thinking? I think that we were all in this together. We recognized the risk during the 1990s; and Congress and the executive branch, I think, did not take enough direct action. And so we can go back. But I think the criticism should be why did America not act earlier against bin Laden and against these threats in a more decisive way? Because the pieces were out there that said these folks are a threat, and it is only a matter of time before they try something big in the United States. I will yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton).

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I am not looking for the media to support the President, it might be nice, or to support the country or to support the direction or support our troops. It would just be nice if they presented a balanced approach, fair and balanced approach to what needs to get done. And it is why when I go home it is good to take a look at the local papers because the local papers will cover the stories of our soldiers that come home. The soldier that I talked to today said he has been in Iraq for 11, 12 months. He is home with his family for the first time. One would think he would say, man, I am just going to sit back on the couch and I am going to vegetate and just enjoy this. He is going to the schools, he is going all over his community telling them about what he did and what America did in Iraq. He is proud of it. He says, I am doing it because nobody else is. We are not getting any help from the media. I am going out and I am telling the story because I was there. And has my colleague been to Iraq?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We have looked into the eyes of the Iraqi people. We have shaken their hands. We have heard them speak. We have seen the sincerity. I always say this is not easy. And there are going to be other ugly days and other ugly events. We are not going to fix this all in one day. We are not going to fix it in 24 months. This takes work. These people are experimenting with a free press, representative government, free markets. They are doing this for the first time after 30 years of a brutal regime.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Let us go attack them in New York and what we will now have is we will now have a safe haven. We can plan out our attacks and we can work on our schedule and when it is appropriate to attack, we will attack. We will now have a safe haven to develop chemical weapons, biological weapons, and it is kind of like that is one direction, backing off. That is not where we can go. We need these folks to wake up every morning and the first thing that they have to fear is that an American helicopter or American Special Ops force is going to come through their door. Or that a missile is going to come from somewhere up in the sky from a Predator, and they are never going to see it coming. We saw that a war on terrorism can be won. I mean, who would have thought that our colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), would address the General People's Congress of Libya? Who would have thought that 3 months ago? I think that happened within the last 4 years that our colleague was over there. I was in Libya about four or five weeks ago. I think within the last month we have picked up, what, 500 tons of mustard gas and chemicals and equipment. Who would have thought that that amount of progress could have been made in that short time? This is a win for the good guys.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Yes, on three different occasions. It was interesting, I talked to one of my soldiers today. He was back in a small town in my community of New Era, Michigan. He just came home after just about a full year in Iraq. He told me what was going on and what the highlights were. He told me that he had been sent into a small community of 15,000 people, I think right near Kirkuk, and I said, hey, you kind of acted as mayor, because he was the governing authority. We know the strategy. We send our troops in, and they are not always fighting. He said, that is exactly what I had the opportunity to do. He said, we rebuilt that community from nothing. And he said, the people are thrilled that we are there; and they are looking for us to leave, because they want their country back. Then we had a very good dialogue back and forth. Then I did ask him, I said, okay, you have your Congressman on the phone. You are going back. You are going to be in the country for a couple of more weeks, but you are leaving west Michigan later on this week, and in a couple of weeks you will be back in Italy. I asked him, I said, you have your Congressman on the phone. What do you want to tell your Congressman? He said, you know, can you do anything about the news media?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Because he said, when we were in Iraq, he said, we could get CNN. He said, we finally turned it off, because what we saw on CNN had absolutely no relationship to what we were seeing in Iraq. The gentleman from Indiana and I are not denying that these five Americans died today. That happened, and it is tragic, and it is sad. We are not denying that the four foreigners and the rioting and the mob scene in Fallujah, that happened. But, at the same time, in much of Iraq today, and the soldier quoted to me. He said, I think 98 percent of the people are there with us, and they are working with us, and they never get any coverage. I yield to my colleague.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, one point, he is right, it is going to be somewhere over a million people probably, in a country of 27 million. That means 4 percent of the folks in that country were brutally murdered. In our country that would be about 11, 12 million people.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I think the gentleman and I are in total agreement that if at this point in time we step back, the terrorists will have won. And that does not mean that the terrorists will go back to their home in Afghanistan or in the remote regions of Pakistan and say, well, chalk one up for the bad guys. They will say, let us now go back, and they will say, yes, it works.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for joining me, because I wanted to talk about exactly that, and I feel fine going there. Because, as the gentleman may remember, a couple of weeks ago, maybe a couple of months ago, we got this Dear Colleague memo talking about the new strategy, and I would just highlight it tonight. Because what we saw today, and it is tragic, the loss of American lives, the loss of the foreign civilians in Iraq and what they did with the bodies. But we should have known. Again that phrase, ``we should have known.'' Because here is what Zarkawi said. ``Someone may say that in this matter we are being hasty,'' remember, this is their document outlining the strategy of the terrorists against our forces and against the forces that want to move forward in Iraq, ``that we are being hasty and rash in leading the Islamic nation into a battle for which it is not ready, a battle that will be revolting,'' I mean the acts of today, dragging the bodies and hanging the bodies is revolting, ``will be revolting and in which blood will be spilled. This is exactly what we want, since right and wrong no longer have any place in our current situation.'' He predicted. This is exactly, what we see today is exactly the strategy, because they believe that that is the way that they can beat us, if they are revolting, spill blood, and right and wrong makes absolutely no difference. I yield back to the gentleman.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, the gentleman and I have probably both talked to a lot of our soldiers from our districts who have been in Iraq.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, tonight I would like to spend a few minutes talking about an update on a situation on the various inquiries as to what happened before 9/11. Most importantly, the work that they are doing is taking a look at putting together a series of recommendations that will enable us to improve our intelligence capabilities and improve our response capabilities into the future. As I was listening to some of the earlier speakers, someone said when that happens and these inquiries present their work and they make their recommendations and then Congress, of course, will have the opportunity to review those recommendations and we may or may not implement them, the comment then was made: and then we know that an event like 9/11 will never happen again. As much as I would like to endorse that comment, I do not believe it is accurate. On 9/11 we, as a Nation, were surprised; and I believe that in the future, regardless of the recommendations that come forward, regardless of how effectively we implement them, we will be surprised again. Let me just lead up to 9/11 and outline some of the things. What do we know today? We know this: that in March of 2003, the United States, we led a coalition of over 30 countries in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The action was undertaken as a last resort. Iraq had been in noncompliance or material breach of 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions spanning a period of 12 years to remove the threat posed by Saddam to his people, the Gulf region, and the world. A couple of things I really want to point out here is that some have said this was an initiative by the Bush administration, and later on I will go through some of the quotes by the previous administrations and also the documentation and the data that shows that throughout the 1990s, the administration, Congress, and others saw Saddam Hussein and Iraq as a threatening menace to his own people, to the region, and to the world. A consistent pattern. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a constant and immediate threat to his neighbors in the Gulf region. And what did Saddam do in the Gulf region? Under Saddam, Iraq fought a decade-long war against Iran and launched an unprovoked invasion of Kuwait. After Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War in 1991, Iraq rebuilt its military strength and continued to use the threat of military action in attempts to intimidate neighboring countries. The pattern is pretty clear. In the region Saddam Hussein treated his neighbors brutally. With his own people we know that Saddam Hussein was a mass murderer. We removed that capability from him. The day we hauled him out of that spider hole, he no longer had the capability to again be a mass murderer. He was a mass murderer and will be held accountable for the crimes against his neighbors and the crimes against his own people. It is estimated that somewhere between at least 400,000 and perhaps 1.2 million Iraqis were killed by his brutal regime. His security service is responsible for the disappearance of thousands of Iraqis, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, perhaps millions, who ended up in mass graves. And his military used chemical weapons not only against Iran, but also against Iraqi citizens. For over a decade prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq was on the U.S. State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. Saddam's regime attempted to assassinate former President Bush in 1993. His security intelligence services maintained strong links to international terrorist groups. Prior to the Gulf War, Iraq amassed an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and it possessed an advanced nuclear weapons program. After the Gulf War, despite the U.N. inspections that continued through 1998, the United States, along with the United Nations and many individual countries, such as Germany and France, assessed that Iraq continued to possess and develop weapons of mass destruction. Post-Operation Iraqi Freedom, the evidence shows that Saddam, in contravention of Iraq's responsibilities under multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions, continued to maintain elements of his weapons of mass destruction programs and had a clear goal to rebuild these programs. It is clear: Iraq and Saddam Hussein proved an evil menace to his own people, to the people in the Gulf and to the rest of the world. It is not brand new. As we go through this, there is a bipartisan consensus as to what this looked like. February 17, 1998, this is a speech that President Bill Clinton gave: ``Iraqi agents have undermined and undercut U.N. inspectors. They have harassed the inspectors, lied to them, disabled monitoring cameras, literally spirited evidence out of the backdoors. And talking about the different types of predators of the 21st century: ``They will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There should be no doubt, Saddam's ability to produce and deliver weapons of mass destruction poses a grave threat to the peace of that region and the security of the world. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region and the security of all the rest of us. In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists who travel the world. If we fail to respond today, Saddam will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity.'' ``I have no doubt he would use them again if permitted to develop them,'' another quote from the same speech. One of the disappointing things that has happened, especially in the last few weeks, is that people are trying to rewrite history, rewrite who did what. President Bush after 9/11 did not go back and collect these comments from the previous President and did not go back and measure those comments versus the actions that were taken. The President said we need to move forward. We are at war. We do not have the time and the energy to look back and to try to point a finger or identify a single individual or group of individuals who failed. The President recognized exactly the type of threat that we faced, the same type of threat that Bill Clinton identified in 1998, a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. Maybe the terrorists on 9/11 used a weapon of mass destruction that was different than what we expected when they crashed planes into buildings, but there is no doubt that there was a consistent theme that already identified this threat in the 1990s. But our President said it is important to recognize that we are at war, and we need to get on a full-scale footing to combat this war and to win this war, and we are not into the blame game. What we have seen in the last 2 to 4 weeks is, I believe, people starting to use this and trying to use it for partisan benefit. This issue is too important and too critical to the future of this country for it to be used as a partisan weapon. I think that President Bill Clinton in the 1990s had it right. He understood the threat. President Bush looked at the work that was done by President Bill Clinton and, after 9/11 had the opportunity to look through it through the lens of 9/11, and decided it was necessary to take a much stronger position and a much stronger role than what had ever been contemplated before, although even early in 2001, before 9/ 11, President Bush had indicated that it was time to take a look at our strategy and see if we should be more aggressive. It was not only the President, but Members of Congress identified this threat. People are looking at people and saying, why did we not do this or that? Here are some quotes from the other body: ``If Saddam Hussein had nothing to hide, why would he have gone to such lengths to prevent the U.N. inspectors from doing their job? There is no doubt that since 1991 Saddam Hussein has squandered his country's resources to maintain his capacity to produce and stockpile chemical and biological weapons. If we bomb Iraq again, he would be right back at it, claiming victory for standing up to the U.S., but no longer under the watchful eye of UNSCOM's cameras.'' Another statement in 1998 from a colleague in the other body: ``Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs and the means to deliver them are a menace to international peace and security. They pose a threat to Iraq's neighbors, to U.S. forces in the Gulf region, to the world's energy supplies and to the integrity and credibility of the United Nations Security Council.'' 1998. Another quote from the other body: ``We are here today to affirm that we and the American people stand with the President and the international community in an effort to end Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and preserve our vital international interests.'' The rules of the House prohibit me from mentioning the names of those individuals who made those quotes, but it is very interesting to see exactly who they are and the clarity with which they identify the threat Saddam Hussein and others posed to the United States. Bill Clinton, February 18: ``In this century we learned through harsh experience that the only answer to aggression and illegal behavior is firmness, determination and, when necessary, action. In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more the very kind of threat Iraq poses now; a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.'' Here is an interesting quote. A critic of the President, a critic of the first President George Bush. It seems some people are never happy. I believe this is a quote from the candidate at that time for Vice President, Mr. Al Gore. This is where Vice President Gore, Senator Gore at that time, was talking about Saddam Hussein: ``He had already launched poison gas attacks repeatedly and Bush looked the other way. He had already conducted extensive terrorism activities and Bush looked the other way. He was already deeply involved in the effort to acquire nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction; and Bush knew it, but he looked the other way. Well, in my view, the Bush administration was acting in a manner directly opposite to what you would expect with all of the evidence it had available to it at the time. Saddam Hussein's nature and intentions were perfectly visible.'' Were perfectly visible. You wonder if you went through this quote and used it shortly after 9/11, you could have written it something like this: President Clinton and Al Gore knew that al Qaeda had already launched attacks against the World Trade Center in 1993, but the Clinton Administration looked the other way. Al Qaeda and terrorist organizations had already attacked our embassies in Africa, but the Clinton Administration looked the other way. Al Qaeda or terrorist organizations were deeply involved in the effort to attack our barracks in Saudi Arabia. The Clinton Administration knew it, but they looked the other way. They knew that al Qaeda or terrorist organizations were involved in the attack on the USS Cole, but they looked the other way. Al Qaeda, bin Laden, their intentions were perfectly clear, but can it be said that the Clinton administration just looked the other way? I am not sure that that is a fair characterization. As I said, the attacks on 9/11 were a surprise. But if you take the language that was used against then-President George Bush in 1992 and apply it shortly after 9/11 to what happened during the 1990s and the statements that were made and the inconsistencies, you wonder why there was not more action taken. You have heard the quotes from various Members in the other body. You have heard the quotes of then-President Bill Clinton, of candidate Al Gore. Madeleine Albright, November 16, 1997: ``Hussein's weapons will not discriminate if and when they are used, and therefore it is important for the region to understand he is a threat. Our adversaries are unlikely to avoid,'' and here she is talking about understanding the threat of terrorism, ``our adversaries are likely to avoid traditional battlefield situations because there American dominance is well established. We must be concerned instead of weapons of mass destruction and by the cowardly instruments of sabotage and hidden bombs. These unconventional threats endanger not only our Armed Forces, but all Americans and America's friends everywhere.'' Here is a very clear statement. Again, some folks are trying to rewrite history saying everything was done during the 1990s. I am not sure it was. We will talk about that a little more. They are also saying the strategy to eliminate Saddam Hussein was recent, that it was not policy of the United States. May 23, remarks by Vice President Gore: ``Despite our swift victory and our effort since the Gulf War, there is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein still seeks to amass weapons of mass destruction.'' People talk about the intelligence being cooked up. The intelligence maybe, and we know, was not everything we wanted it to be; but it was not cooked up. ``Saddam Hussein still seeks to amass weapons of mass destruction. You know as well as I do,'' what a statement, ``you know as well as I do that as long as Saddam Hussein stays in power, there can be no comprehensive peace for the people of Israel or the people of the Middle East.'' This is Vice President Gore, May 23, the year 2000. They hear us talking about what the policy was, and I think it was established a couple of years earlier. But here is what the then Vice President says about the policy of the Clinton administration. We have made it clear that it is our policy to see Saddam Hussein marginalized? That is not the word that is used. Contained? No. Reformed? No. We have made it clear, that is, the Clinton administration has made it clear, that it is our policy to see Saddam Hussein gone. That was the policy of the United States prior to a new administration coming into office, prior to 9/11, because it was stated during the Clinton administration. It goes on: We have maintained sanctions in the face of rising criticism while improving the Oil For Food program to help the Iraqi people directly. And just as a sidebar, while improving the Oil For Food program, we found out now, as the details have come back, that that was one of the greatest rip-offs ever. It was used to fund weapons acquisition, it was used to fund palaces and to build runways in the middle of nowhere in Iraq. Going on with this quote: We have used force when necessary, and that has been frequently, and we will not let up in our efforts. We will not let up. We will not let up in our efforts to free Iraq from Saddam's rule. Should he think of challenging us, I would strongly advise against it. As a Senator, I voted for the use of force. As Vice President, I supported the use of force. If entrusted with the presidency, my resolve will never waiver. Madam Speaker, the statements go on. Those are the statements in the 1990s. What about in 2002? Again, some of my colleagues, and here is a quote from the presumed Democratic nominee for President: I believe the record of Saddam Hussein's ruthless, reckless breach of international values and standards of behavior, which is at the core of the cease-fire agreement, with no reach, no stretch is cause enough, is cause enough for the world community to hold him accountable by use of force, if necessary. Senator John Kerry, October 9, 2002. Here is another quote from one of his colleagues: But that isn't just a future threat. Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose real threats to America today, tomorrow. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq's enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East. He could make these weapons available to many terrorist groups, third parties which have contact with his government. Those groups in turn could bring those weapons into the United States and unleash a devastating attack against our citizens. I fear that greatly. Madam Speaker, it is pretty amazing, the unanimity between various sides of the aisle, the executive and the legislative branches, as to the threat posed by terrorism in the 1990s and the characterization and the threats posed by Saddam Hussein. Here is another quote: As the attacks of September 11 demonstrated, the immense destructiveness of modern technology means we can no longer afford to wait around for a smoking gun. I do believe Iraq poses an imminent threat. I also believe that, after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated. It is in the nature of these weapons that he has and the way they are targeted against civilian populations that documented capability and demonstrated intent may be the only warning we get. To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? I do not think we can. That was the unanimity that we saw in 2002, it was the unanimity that we saw in the late 1990s, and over the last 4 to 6 weeks, folks have been trying to rewrite history in saying, no, no, I was not there. That is not where I was in 1990. That is not where I was in 1998. That is not where I was in 2002. As a matter of fact, the only person that has messed up in this whole thing is the current administration. And that is utterly false. There was a consensus, and what is now happening, and what I am concerned about is that when we are at war, and that is where I think we are, we are a nation at war. Madam Speaker, I see my colleague, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) has joined me, and I yield to him.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank both my colleagues for joining me tonight. As we began, there is no doubt that we are making progress. There is no doubt that there is still a tremendous amount of work to do, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there is also no doubt that these countries have a long way to go, whether it was 12 years under the Russians and Taliban government in Afghanistan, those governments and those regimes which destroyed what little that country had, or whether it was 30 years of a brutal regime in Iraq. These countries both now are experiencing for the first time in a long time the taste of freedom, of building a civil society, of building a country that is based on a Constitution, that is providing opportunities to all of their citizens. There are potholes on the way to success, but there is no doubt in my mind that we need to keep moving forward; that these countries have a tremendous potential to set an example for that part of the world, especially Iraq, to set an example for the rest of the world as to the types of things that can happen. They are good people, they are moving in the right direction, and they are taking ownership for their country, the future of their country. What we need to do is we need to stand alongside them and to help guide them in the right direction.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Mexico.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We were there in August and I think even then we also flew over the city and we saw the tremendous amount of commerce, the cars on the roads. Baghdad looked much like a functioning city until you got to some of the compounds where we had built the protected barricades. I can tell you that having been back there 4 weeks ago, the commerce has even expanded much more significantly. There are more cars on the road. We drove by the gas stations. The lines are gone. The kids are still out there on the streets. It is still a dangerous place, but this is a place that is making progress.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Everybody would say, of course, that is George Bush, January 2002. No. We have made it clear that it is our policy to see Saddam Hussein gone. ``If entrusted with the presidency, my resolve will never waver.'' Al Gore, May 23, 2000. These people are now revealing these secrets that the President had this secret plan to get rid of Saddam when he came into power. Excuse me. This was the policy of Bill Clinton in 2000, forcefully articulated by then-Vice President Al Gore saying, ``We have made it clear that it is our policy to see Saddam Hussein gone.''

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Going back to the speech by then-Vice President Al Gore in May of 2000: ``As Senator I voted for the use of force, as Vice President I supported the use of force. If entrusted with the presidency, my resolve will never waver.'' And then, going on, talking about this time in the case of Iran, but it is also true for Iraq: It is still a major sponsor of terrorism, a seeker of weapons of mass destruction. That is a deadly and an unacceptable combination. There is no doubt that the Clinton administration and, at that point in time, Vice President Al Gore got it right. Iraq was a threat to the United States, Saddam Hussein had to go and that was a policy and a vision that was carried through under President Bush and his new administration with one big difference. Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda, bin Laden, the war on terrorism were seen through a very different lens. They were seen through the lens of 9/11. And so what we had to do is we had to take a look at the broad expanse of terrorism and the threats that were out there, recognizing that terrorists do not take a break. They do not take a vacation. 24/7 they are looking at how they are going to attack the United States, when, how and where. There is only one way you can respond to that kind of a threat with people who are, I believe, fully committed. If they got their hands on weapons of mass destruction, the technology, they would manufacture them, they would use them against us, they would use them against the West and against our allies. And the only way to stop them is not to negotiate with them, but is to put the pressure on them 24-7, 365 days a year.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague. I thank him for being here tonight. There is no doubt that we are making progress in Iraq and not only do Americans continue to pay the price, and our Coalition forces, but the Iraqis who are standing with us right now are probably the ones that are really on the front lines that scare the terrorists most, because they are demonstrating to the rest of the Iraqis that they are willing, as my colleague said, to pay the price with their blood to grow the flower of freedom in Iraq. I yield to my colleague from Arizona.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I think that is a key word that we need to spend time on, maybe not tonight, but that the American people and our colleagues need to think about. Are we really at war? It was not that long ago that we had the opportunity to be at an event where one of the deputy Secretaries of the Defense Department, Steve Cambone, spoke and was very definitive. And he said we are a Nation at war, that we do not know exactly how long it will last, but it will not be short, recognizing that we are at war in that the situation that we face is very different, and we should realize it is different than how we treated it during the 1990s which was what my colleague and I talked about earlier, saying that these are just random criminal activities. This is much more serious.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I was not prepared to talk about Clarke because I am not sure that the whole debate can be dignified by a debate or discussion on the floor of the House. It, from my point of view, is one of the more disappointing things that I have seen. People who are coming out of positions where they have been entrusted by more than one administration with the security of the United States, the lives of American citizens, the lives of American service people, the lives in the CIA, and they very well know that they can go out and they can make whatever claims they want because the information that could thoroughly embarrass them and discredit them, and I believe it exists, is classified. I can tell the gentleman there are few documents that I would just kind of like to take and put in Richard's face or give to the media and say, Now, just like this memo. It is not a memo. Here is what you briefed, not to the Bush administration in an internal memo, here is what you briefed to the press a year ago. Here is the letter of resignation that you sent, I believe, into the White House that praises this President for some of the work that he has done; and now that it comes to be an election time and it is time to sell a book, all of a sudden you are rewriting history. You can go out and make whatever accusations you want, knowing that most of the information that would rebut what you are saying is classified and so, hey, you are basically entitled to a free shot to do whatever you want. And 2 years ago this person was holding the secrets and the strategy of the United States in place to some of the most dangerous elements that were challenging us. It is disappointing to see this kind of behavior. We deserve better. I yield to my colleague.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, we have had a wide variety of people come in and testify, and I can tell the Members that one of the things that I really appreciate on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is the seriousness with which individuals on both sides of the aisle take the job that they have got on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. We do not find the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence members participating in this gotcha type of game. We recognize that the responsibilities of the committee are too serious. We also recognize that we have had Richard Clarke testify in front of us, we have had a lot of folks who were in various capacities testify in front of us in secret session, and not everybody agrees. There is a variety of opinions, and it is our job on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to put the package together that tries to make sure that something like this never happens again.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The gentleman is right. There has been so much focus on weapons of mass destruction. Let me read a quote for you: ``There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein still seeks to amass weapons of mass destruction. You know as well as I do that as long as Saddam Hussein stays in power, there can be no comprehensive peace for the people of Israel or the people of the Middle East. We have made it clear that it is our policy to see Saddam Hussein gone.''

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I yield to the gentleman from New Mexico.