Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, let me just respond to my good friend from Rhode Island, he is a great friend of mine and a former colleague on the Armed Services Committee, the estimate that has been given, that has been bandied around, that we would need some 20,000 support troops to support the 21,500 troops that are involved in the President's plan, some of whom are already in theater, has been rebutted by DOD, which said it is not 1 for 1 support to line troops, it is about 1 in 10, which in the estimate that they gave us was about 2,000 to 2,300, not 20,000 support troops. Using that number, even with the 21,500 troops that are involved in the Baghdad plan, adding them to the 138 that we have right now, still brings us to a number that is lower than the 160,000 that we had December a year ago. I know that number has not been absolutely resolved, but I would just tell my friend that I believe it is going to be much lower than the number that has been put out there. To my good friend from California, who talked about the Kosovo vote and the resolution to disapprove it, my recollection is that vote was undertaken before troops were moved. In this case, the 82nd Airborne is not already over the line in Iraq, but they actually have a brigade deployed in this operation, and the Baghdad operation that is being undertaken right now has a combination of Iraqi troops and American troops in each of nine sectors. Madam Speaker, I yield as much time as he would like to take to Mr. Conaway from Texas, who is a gentleman that represents a great base at Fort Hood.

Mr. HUNTER. I will just tell the gentleman, in the MOSs that our folks sign up for, especially the aerial supportive MOSs, that is always out there, that they are going to have to go, because where the armed services go, where the active folks go, let me just finish my answer to the gentleman. He asked me a question. I am going to ask answer it. If you are in a supportive service that involves things likes aerial refueling, C-130 work, which is the workhorse of the U.S. military, you understand when you go in, you are going to be making probably multiple tours. If you join the U.S. Marines right now, the recruiter tells you as you sign up, you can be guaranteed that you will go to Iraq. I would say to the gentleman another thing: Knowing those things, we are meeting all of our enlistment goals in the Guard and Reserve. So the active duty people who are undertaking multiple tours are coming back and reenlisting. And knowing that, knowing that you are exposed to multiple tours, we have more people signing up for the Guard, for the Reserve. And interestingly, I will tell the gentleman, the place where we have had problems with recruiting in the last year from the information I have seen is the Naval Reserve, which doesn't do tours in Iraq. But the combat arms have multiple tours.

Mr. HUNTER. Reclaiming my time, I will just tell the gentleman this: There is a difference between people in specialties spending more time doing multiple tours, and I will say to him again, almost all Marines know that they are going to do multiple tours, either in country or on the so-called float, which is the deployment around the world, because they are the 9/11 force for this country. So that is something that people do. That is a far cry from not having enough firepower to respond to an Iranian crisis. We still have tons of firepower to respond to an Iranian breakout or surprise, a technological surprise, with respect to development of nuclear systems. Madam Speaker, if the gentlewoman from California has more speakers, I will enjoy listening to them, and I will reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself just 30 seconds, and I would like to just make one note. That is, if we add the 21,500 troops that are already partly in Iraq, these reinforcements to the 138 who existed before the movement started, and we allow for the troops who are rotating home, we will have fewer; we will have 157,000 troops in Iraq, according to DOD. That is fewer than the number of troops that we had a year ago in December. That is the state of this so-called surge; fewer troops than we had last year. Mr. Speaker, at this point I would yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton) who, for a number of years, chaired the Terrorism Subcommittee and is now the ranking member.

Mr. HUNTER. Would the gentleman yield briefly?

Mr. HUNTER. I want to thank the gentleman for yielding briefly. I want to thank him for his statement and just clarify the record, while he has got some time, if I could. Mr. Speaker, my good friend from California, the gentlelady, made the remark, as I understand it, that the Iraq Study Group did not agree with the President's so-called surge. I just would point to the statement that the Iraq Study Group published in their report. They said we could, however, support a short-term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad or to speed up the training and equipping mission if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines that such steps would be effective. We also rejected the immediate withdrawal of our troops because we believe that so much is at stake. So the Iraq Study Group did state that they would support a surge to effect the stabilization of Baghdad, and it is in the nine sectors of Baghdad with Iraqi battalions to the front, American battalions backing them up, that this operation is taking right now. So it appears to me that the President is, in fact, following and is on common ground with this recommendation by the Iraq Study Group. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I understand we have until 12 o'clock to complete this part of the debate?

Mr. HUNTER. I would just say to my friend from California, he is consistent with the Iraq Study Group to the extent of 21,500 troops, which has been described by your side of the debate as very substantial and such an important thing and such a major thing that it should be stopped. So that, obviously, is not an inconsequential aspect of the Iraq Study Group's statement.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes to just make a brief response to a couple of statements that have been made. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Holt referred to our wounded folks in Walter Reed as tragic. They are not tragic. They are American heroes, and they are the people who have bought the freedom that allows us to have this debate today. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield some time to three unusual Americans on the Armed Services Committee who all have had sons serving in the Iraq theater. The first gentleman is the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kline), whose son has been a helicopter pilot in Iraq, as much time as the gentleman wishes to consume.

Mr. HUNTER. Certainly. I can tell the gentleman, my son has done two tours of duty. There are a number of people that have done that.

Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I have got one speaker left here, Mr. Franks of Arizona, but let me just say one thing before he speaks. I appreciate the debate. I think we have had a good discussion this evening. I wanted to say one thing about Charlie Norwood. He passed away. He was a Member of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. I was a member of that brigade. I had a very average tour, a very easy tour in Vietnam. I did nothing special. But Charlie Norwood was a real hero who won the Combat Medical Badge and two Bronze Stars in Vietnam. I thought to commemorate Charlie, I have got my copy of General Douglas MacArthur's farewell speech that I quoted earlier, and let me just quote a paragraph about duty, honor and country that Douglas MacArthur thought so represented the fighting man in this country. He said these of words, duty, honor and country, ``They teach to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.'' I think that largely represented our great friend Charlie Norwood. Madam Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 10 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) and note that he has a son who has served as a U.S. Marine in Iraq. (Mr. AKIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume. Mr. Speaker, in my office I keep a photo of about a dozen Kurdish mothers whose bodies are strewn across the hillside in northern Iraq, holding their babies, killed in mid-stride where they were gassed to death by Saddam Hussein. As I listened to some folks in this debate talk about what they consider to be an immoral war, an illegal war, an occupation that is not consistent with morality, I harken back to that picture and the thousands of people that it represents, and I harken back also to the exhuming of mass graves with, again, mothers shot in the back of the head with a .45-caliber pistol by Saddam Hussein's executioners and with their little babies similarly with holes in the back of their skulls. Mr. Speaker, this operation in Iraq is indeed a moral operation. It represents the goodness of the American people. I am also reminded of something that lots of folks and the Vice President talked about, and that is the goodness that we have brought with the 3 million-plus babies who have been vaccinated, with the hundreds of schools and hospitals that have been built, and with all those expectant mothers that were given prenatal care by the Americans so that their children would be born in a healthy fashion. But, Mr. Speaker, I recall that in 1984 Ronald Reagan very eloquently asked the American people to support him in bringing freedom to the people of El Salvador. I remember his speech; and in his speech, he harkened back to another American who had appealed to us in bringing freedom to another part of the world, which was at that time endangered, and that was Greece in 1947. The communists were very close to victory in Greece, and Harry Truman appealed to the American people in a joint session of Congress. He said the free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter, we may endanger the peace of the world, and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this Nation. Now, we have no guarantee of victory in Iraq. There is no battle plan that comes with a guarantee of victory, but I will tell one thing that is very clear: what is happening in Iraq and our efforts in Iraq are connected and are watched by every terrorist in the world, and that connection is established and travels as fast as the speed of electrons in this age of television and technology and high-paced, fast media and the Internet. They see what we are doing. And that connection, Mr. Speaker, was made when the Beirut bombings occurred against the Marines in the Marine barracks in Beirut. In fact, I think Mr. Skelton was with me. We were over there very shortly before those bombings occurred. They are connected and the terrorist world watched very closely when there was no response to that. They watched very closely when there was no response in the Khobar Towers, with respect to the Cole and extremely anemic response with respect to the bombings in the embassies in Africa. Now we are undertaking an important and difficult mission; and, Mr. Speaker, I pointed out before that at least one brigade of the 82nd Airborne is already in place in Baghdad, now engaged in the operation, and we have a brigade of the Big Red One moving now toward the theater. I believe we have right at 4,000 members of the 82nd Airborne now in country in Iraq, and we have Iraqi soldiers and Americans engaged in the nine sectors of the city already undertaking this operation and this plan that has been developed by our warfighting commanders. The idea that we are here, poised to retroactively condemn an operation that our soldiers are already carrying out, is, to my mind, remarkable. There is not going to be any force in effect with respect to this vote that will take place shortly that will do anything but send the wrong message to America's allies, and I think you have seen comments by some of our allies over the last several weeks with respect to the message that we send out. We are interesting people are we not, Mr. Speaker. We send out messages with all the electronic gadgets in the world to convey the messages to the entire world, and then we say, you know, we really did not mean what you take our statements to mean and we really did not intend to give anybody the wrong message that we still support the troops. Well, Mr. Speaker, we have got a number of great members of the Armed Services Committee that I want to yield to, and I want to come back later and talk a little bit later about this war against terror and the centerpiece that is Iraq and the centerpiece of that which is as planned. You know, I was thinking there was a statement once that in a little hut in Central America when we were standing up to the Communists and we were providing a shield for El Salvador, while that fragile democracy stood up, there was a hut in El Salvador which reportedly had the writing on it, Thank God for Ronald Reagan. I am wondering if some trooper in the 82nd Airborne, in the 2nd brigade of the 82nd Airborne may write on a wall in Baghdad, maybe on Friday when we take this vote, This is the day in which the American Congress condemned the mission that we are carrying out today. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to take a couple of minutes to answer a couple of things that my friend said. First Mr. Weiner said, ``We aren't done.'' Madam Speaker, that is one thing that I am worried about. He said that we want more choices, more bills, more language. Not this Member. I will settle for a ``no'' on this resolution. I haven't asked for more bills, more choices, or different language. And the problem with this resolution, the gentleman said this is a very good resolution because it is very clear, very concise, and gives us clear choices. This resolution retroactively condemns an action that has already been taken. That is the movement of reinforcements into the theater. You already have the 82nd Airborne in the theater. That is part of the reinforcing force. They are already in there. You already have a brigade from the 82nd Airborne in one of the nine sectors right now, operating, boots on the ground as we talk. So you aren't prohibiting the President from sending reinforcements. He said that American forces are being stretched thinner and thinner and thinner. We have 2\1/2\ million Americans in uniform. We have roughly 138,000 before the surge. Now a little more than 140,000 counting the ones that are already in country. When they are in country and the support troops are there and less the troops who will be rotating home at that point, you will have at the high point, we are told by DOD, about 157,000 troops. That is less than we had a year ago in country, I would say to the gentleman. So that is not a huge surge. He stated that we are going to be drawn thinner, and I quote, ``thinner and thinner and thinner.'' So you have about 160,000 troops, a little less than that, max. That is not 10 percent of the 2.5 million persons who are presently wearing the uniform of the United States. Secondly I will say to my friend, I want to say to folks who listen to this debate, because this statement about us being drawn thin and therefore being susceptible to problems and being vulnerable is a message that has come up several times in this debate. We have more than doubled the precision firepower of this country since the last administration, that is the Clinton administration. You have more than doubled the precision firepower. That means the ability, if people should give the United States a need to respond militarily, the ability to send precision systems that can explode right straight through goalposts at long distances and handle lots of stuff. Now, the gentleman is very concerned about Iran. I share that concern. And I share the concern the gentleman has about the centrifuge activity and the proposed centrifuge activity that Iran has discussed and may at some point develop with the aid of the Russians and the Chinese. I would just remind the gentleman that those precision systems, that doubling of the precision firepower that we now have, is probably the right medicine if we should have to keep the military option open and on the table with respect to Iran. So we will watch them as they try to walk down this road to developing a nuclear weapon.

Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess).

Mr. HUNTER. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, to complete this triad of veterans' fathers, fathers of sons who have served in Iraq, is Joe Wilson, whose son Alan has received the Combat Action Badge for service in Iraq and the Palmetto Cross, which is a high award for the National Guard in South Carolina, and who has a son in the Signal Corps, Julian, a doctor in the Navy, and a son Hunter, a well-named son, Hunter, in the ROTC. The reason I am going through these members of the Wilson clan, Mr. Speaker, is because inspired by his wife Roxanne, all these young men are serving in the military, and if the Wilson family does not re-up, we are in trouble. I yield such time as he may consume to the great gentleman from South Carolina, Joe Wilson, to follow that wonderful presentation by Mr. Akin.

Mr. HUNTER. We have been up as high as 40 percent National Guard and Reserve, and that is a deliberate policy of the United States. When we went to war in Vietnam, the Guard and Reserve for practical purposes stayed home. And we said from here on out, when we go to war, we go to war with what is known as a total force. So you have a Reserve element that goes to war. If you were over in Iraq, as the gentlelady has been there a number of times, you will see Reservists flying C-130s, doing a lot of support missions, and you have National Guard units on the ground.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Georgia for letting me come in and offer something that I did not see offered by the Democrat side in this debate, which was the Army's position on this continuing resolution. In fact, they posited this continuing resolution as motherhood, apple pie and everything that we need for a strong national defense, and they invoked the interest of American veterans. What they did not tell American veterans was that the Army sees this as a real problem and a real cut in benefits, and things that would help the active Army come in this defense realignment, this base realignment with divisions coming back to the United States, divisions like the big red one coming back to Ft. Riley, Kansas, and lots of others and lots of quality-of- life programs for the men and women of the armed services and for their families. What we did not see coming from the Democrat side of the aisle was the fact that they reached over with one hand to give money to one group of servicemembers of veterans; they reached over and scooped money out of the cash register that would accrue to the benefit of another group, a very important people, and this is the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States. So let me give you the Army's perspective as manifested in a letter from Lieutenant General David Melcher, United States Army, Military Deputy for Budget, Assistant Secretary of the Army, Financial Management and Comptroller. He says this: ``You recently requested a quick summary of Base Realignment and Closure impacts to the Army as proposed in the Joint Resolution, H.J. Res. 20.'' That is the resolution that the Democrat side of the aisle just passed. ``The attached information accurately portrays these impacts. The following identifies key Army concerns: One, ``Army will not begin with approximately $2 billion of our BRAC program, which is a key enabler to grow and position the Army; this leaves more than half of our fiscal year 2007 BRAC program unexecutable.'' Number 2, ``Operational Impact on the Training, Mobilization and Deployment of Forces in support of the Global War on Terrorism.'' For some reason, the Democrat side of the aisle did not quite want to show that statement by the U.S. Army, that their bill that they passed, their continuing resolution, would, in fact, impact training, mobilization and deployment of forces in support of the global war on terrorism. Number 3, ``Unravels the Army's synchronized stationing and BRAC plan, puts growth of the Army, stationing, and BRAC at risk.'' That means this: We are bringing back divisions from around the world. Places like Germany are now going to see movement in which American divisions are going to come back, and they are going to be repositioned in the United States. That means you got to go out and build barracks. You have got to go out and build single family housing. You have got to put a lot of construction in place. The Democrat majority reached out and took away part of that money. Number 4, ``Delays transformation of Reserve Component, has operational consequences.'' We are involved in two shooting wars, and we have now done something that has operational consequences. Number 5, ``Breaks the Nation's obligation to provide Soldiers and Families adequate quality of life, affects the All Volunteer Force,'' something we did not hear from the other side of the aisle. Number 6, ``Delays capital investment and inhibits economic development, affects local jobs and growth across the U.S.'' Over 80,000 jobs affected by what they just did. And lastly, ``Limits predictability and military construction acquisition efficiencies, results in higher construction costs.'' So, as we see costs going through the roof, the contractors can say, yep, we were going to build that single family housing for those military families but you guys reached in, took a bunch of the money out; we had to give a stop work order to our crews, and now we are going to charge you, the American taxpayers, more money. I have got another executive summary here that goes into more detail, and I thought it might just be good to give a few of the examples of this money that was cut by the Democrat majority, which they skipped over very quickly, and tell the American people a few details about these projects that they moved off the table with one push of the hand. Training ranges, command and control, training barracks, 19 projects, $560 million, including training facilities at Fort Bliss, Texas; maneuver training at Fort Benning, Georgia; air defense artillery at Fort Sill; and battlefield trauma lab at Fort Sam Houston. In fact, I have been to the battlefield trauma lab. That is where we train our combat medics to save lives in the war fighting theaters in Afghanistan and Iraq. Cannot start communications/electronics, RD&E, center phase one at APG, that is Aberdeen Proving Ground, to close Fort Monmouth and support the global war on terrorism. Cannot start on human resources command at Fort Knox, Kentucky; recruiting facilities at Redstone Arsenal; power projection platform at Ft. Riley or other operational projects at Shaw Air Force Base, Benning and Leavenworth. Armed Forces reserve centers, 27 projects, $700 million in 16 States. Examples of fiscal year 2007 BRAC quality of life requirements, eight projects, youth and child development centers, Benning, Riley, Bliss, Sam Houston; dental clinics, Bliss, Sam Houston; medical clinic, Ft. Riley, Kansas. That is where the big red one is returning from Europe. All fiscal year 2007 BRAC projects and follow-on MILCON are synchronized with modular force build, operational rotations, BRAC and GDPR. What that means is that we are now trying to produce some 42 combat brigades, and we are trying to modularize them so they have the same equipment, they have got the same training, so that they are interchangeable so you can move out with a combat fighting force and you can move a brigade in from another area and you can have that from another particular division and that brigade is interchangeable. It does not have equipment that is noninteroperable, and it means you can fight more effectively and more consistently. That modularity has been hampered by these cuts. So these are the cuts that were made by the Democrat majority, pushed off the table, projects pushed off the table with one push of the hand and with barely a mention on the Democrat side. So I would just say, my friend from Georgia, glad you got that sign up there, Official Truth Squad. You know, I think sometimes it is important to know the entire story. That is a part of the real story about what we did today. I thank the gentleman for letting me come down and talk a little bit about the Army's position and the Army's position against the cuts that were manifested in this continuing resolution. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. HUNTER. No.

Mr. HUNTER. Let me tell you something.

Mr. HUNTER. The other side tried to appeal to the hearts of American veterans. I am a veteran. But you know something else? I have a son who just did 4 years of active duty with the U.S. Marine Corps, trained at some of these bases that we are talking about, witnessed and was training sometimes in facilities that were somewhat deficient, that needed to be improved. I will bet you, if you look in the family of every American veteran that the other side was playing to, in passing the CR and saying we are doing good things for you guys, for you old guys like me, they were not doing good things for our sons. Because our sons are on active duty right now. They need to have that quality of life for our military families. I can remember being with my son as Lynne and I would follow them around the United States, as a lot of military moms and dads do, trying desperately to get a little time with our grandchildren, and we would be often in substandard housing. We would see the efforts that had been undertaken by DOD to upgrade housing and to upgrade facilities and to make life better for families. A lot of those programs are in those cuts that the Democrats side of the aisle just made. So if you are playing to us old veterans, remember, there is another thing that is very near and dear to us old veterans, and that is our kids who are on active duty or recently on active duty. We are concerned about them. So don't take away from them to give to us on the basis that we will then appreciate it, and we will appreciate them, and we somehow will not look at the reductions that they made to the active force. The active force and its benefits are very, very important to every veteran. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, one of the most fascinating and popular shows on television today, In the Womb on the National Geographic Channel, provides viewers with amazingly detailed footage of unborn children growing and interacting in utero, Watching these babies suck their thumbs, smile and cry has led many to question why a nation, that can spend millions of dollars searching for life on other planets, is not able to discern life in the beating heart of an unborn child. For many years now, I have introduced an important piece of legislation that fulfills what I believe to be one of our most important obligations as elected leaders of this great Nation; protecting our unborn children from harm. I am proud to once again be introducing the Right to Life Act and I am optimistic of its future. Unfortunately, over 1.3 million abortions are performed in the United States each year and over 38 million have been performed since abortion was legalized in 1973. Mr. Speaker, this is a national tragedy. It is the duty of all Americans to protect our children--born and unborn. This bill, the Right to Life Act, would provide blanket protection to all unborn children from the moment of conception. In 1973, the United States Supreme Court, in the landmark case of Roe v. Wade, refused to determine when human life begins and therefore found nothing to indicate that the unborn are persons protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. In the decision, however, the Court did concede that, ``If the suggestion of personhood is established, the appellants'' case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.'' Considering Congress has the constitutional authority to uphold the Fourteenth Amendment, coupled by the fact that the Court admitted that if personhood were to be established, the unborn would be protected, it can be concluded that we have the authority to determine when life begins. The Right to Life Act does what the Supreme Court refused to do in Roe v. Wade and recognizes the personhood of the unborn for the purpose of enforcing 4 important provisions in the Constitution: (1) Sec. 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibiting States from depriving any person of life; (2) Sec. 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment providing Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provision of this amendment; (3) the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, which concurrently prohibits the Federal Government from depriving any person of life; and (4) Article I, Section 8, giving Congress the power to make laws necessary and proper to enforce all powers in the Constitution. This legislation will protect millions of future children by prohibiting any State or Federal law that denies the personhood of the unborn, thereby effectively overturning Roe v. Wade. I firmly believe that life begins at conception and that the preborn child deserves all the rights and protections afforded an American citizen. This measure will recognize the unborn child as a human being and protect the fetus from harm. The Right to Life Act will finally put our unborn children on the same legal footing as all other persons and I hope my colleagues will join me in support of this important effort.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow morning, at 7:24 a.m., the first rays of the morning sun will illuminate the markers, the crosses and Stars of David at Arlington Cemetery. And about a half hour later they will move across the oak ridges of the Blue Ridge Mountains and down to the slow waters of the Shenandoah River and across the Midwest of this country. And, Mr. Speaker, they will arrive, about an hour later, that great American sunrise, at the small towns in Texas, the hometowns of Audie Murphy, who fought with such great heroism in World War II, Sergeant Roy Benevides, who was a hero of the Vietnam War, and the hometown of Corporal Jason Dunham, who was given, a few days ago, the Medal of Honor by the President of the United States for his extreme valor in Iraq. Mr. Speaker, these three American heroes are tied by a common thread to each other and to the American people and to our national purpose, in that they all fought for the expansion of freedom. Now, Audie Murphy fought in a war, World War II, which was a war that, once we had gotten into it and got past that first vote for a draft, which I think passed by one vote in this body, and realized that it was make or break time for the United States, that it was a war that would involve the full commitment of our entire country and all of our energies, a war in which there was unanimous support, that it was a war in which Audie Murphy fought with such great heroism. The war in which Roy Benevides fought was a war that didn't support, or didn't involve that unanimous support by the American people, but, nonetheless, involved a noble cause, the cause of spreading freedom in Vietnam. And the war that Corporal Jason Dunham gave his life in to protect his buddies in the 1st Marine Division, was a war, similarly, in which the United States has entered a long established blueprint for establishing freedom around the world, that is standing up a free government, standing up a military to protect that free government. And he was involved in the dangerous conflict in Anbar Province and gave his life for his colleagues in that struggle. So all three of these heroes were involved in the greatest American purpose, which is to spread freedom. Mr. Speaker, we have an interest in spreading freedom, not just a humanitarian interest, but a national interest. After World War II, we stood up the free government in Japan, and we stood up a military apparatus that could protect it. And who would quarrel with the idea that we have an enormous interest in having Japan, a free nation, with considerable economic and military capability, on that end of the Pacific Ocean? We also maintained free Germany, that is, West Germany, with the Berlin airlift, which was carried out with lots of American expenses and involvement and sacrifice. But we did that and, ultimately, that resulted in the reuniting of East and West Germany, and after the wall came down, the freeing of hundreds of millions of people as a result of America's triumph in the Cold War. And nobody would quarrel with the idea that having a free Germany in that strategic location was important to the United States. In our own hemisphere, we maintained a shield around that fragile democracy in El Salvador as we stood up that free government and allowed them to have their first elections. And nobody would quarrel with the idea that El Salvador, which now is an ally of the United States in the operation in Iraq, is an important asset for the United States in our own hemisphere, an important ally, an important partner; and that that is much preferable to the Marxist state which was where it was headed when the United States intervened. Having free nations around the world in strategic locations especially is important to America. I think we all agree with that now, we have got a chance, if we succeed in Iraq, and having a country that is a friend, not an enemy of the United States, a country that will not be a state sponsor of terrorism in the future for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years, and a country which has a modicum of freedom for its people. Now, you know in spreading freedom around the world, incidentally, there are lots of naysayers. There are a lot of people who criticize and have criticized the American efforts. After all, we only saved half of the Korean peninsula and none of Vietnam for freedom. People can point to the cliffs of Normandy in France and point out that the country that hosts those American gravesides for the soldiers who gave their lives for the liberation of France, that country is less than enthusiastic in supporting the United States in our efforts to expand freedom around the world. You could probably say the same thing about the Government of Germany, seeming to have forgotten the ordeal of the Berlin airlift that the Americans endured to maintain freedom in West Germany and ultimately bring freedom to all the German people. There can be lots of criticism about the American plan. But, you know, the American plan, the idea of freedom has worked. I want to talk just a little bit about the Baghdad plan, the plan that the President and the joint chiefs and our war fighting leadership in Iraq have put together. Now, somebody along this great tradition of critics who like to imply that somehow the road that we didn't take was a smooth road, there is lots of criticism of this plan. This plan is not guaranteed to work because a lot of it relies on a factor that the United States doesn't control, and that is willingness, the willingness of the Iraqi military to show up with all of its units, to stand and fight, to be willing to engage in battle, and to be willing to take the burden of security that presently is carried mainly by the Americans. But let us talk about this Baghdad plan, because the Baghdad plan could be a pattern for the handoff of the security responsibilities from the United States to the Iraqi Government. In each of the nine sectors in Baghdad that the plan envisions, there will be an Iraqi brigade. Now, usually an Iraqi brigade will consist of two or three maneuvered battalions. A battalion can be anything from 500 to 800 people, so it consists of two or three maneuvered battalions who will be out in front. They will have some embedded American advisors and people who can do things like call in medivacs and direct precision fire and do other things that we call combat enablers, so they will have American embedded teams helping them. Beyond that, standing as a backup to these two or three Iraqi battalions will be an American battalion, helping to shore them up, helping to give them advice, standing behind them while the Iraqis move through the neighborhoods and through the communities in the areas that are violent in Baghdad. Now, my recommendation has been that we take some of the 27 Iraqi battalions that have been trained and equipped that are in the quiet areas of Iraq, and nine of the 18 provinces are quiet areas. They are areas that involve less than one attack a day. That means that the 27 battalions that we have trained and equipped that are in those areas aren't undertaking substantial military operations right now. We make sure that the Iraqi Ministry of Defense saddles up those battalions and moves them into the fight, rotates them into the battle, principally in the Baghdad area, but they could do the same thing in other areas in the Sunni triangle and even out in the al Anbar province. That does a couple of things. First, it helps get the job done. It moves trained and equipped fighting personnel into a theater of battle, and it provides people and equipment to make the necessary military operations to settle down Baghdad. But the second thing it does is train up the Iraqi Army, because the best way to train any army is to put them in military operations. Let us put them in military operations. Now my understanding that it is, in fact, from those nine quiet provinces we are going to have some three brigades that will involve six to nine battalions moving from the north and south, from quiet areas in Iraq, into Baghdad. We will be moving Iraqi battalions into Baghdad. Those have been committed by the Iraqi Government. Now, there is no guarantees that all Iraqi forces are going to show up. They are going to have to prove that. In the past, they haven't always shown up. Although they have battalions that have performed very, very well in combat, they have got others that haven't performed well. Now, we could take this pattern of having two or three Iraqi battalions with an American backup battalion, and we could use that to get combat experience and operational experience for every single Iraqi unit. Presently, there are 114 Iraqi battalions extant. That means that we have trained and equipped 114 battalions. I am sure that they are at varying levels of end strength, that is, personnel, and probably varying levels of equipage. But you only need some basic equipment for this urban fighting. You need to have weapons, you need to have ammunition, you need to have communications gear, and you need to have transportation, and you need to have soldiers who are willing, willing to obey the chain of command. You need to have leaders who are willing and able to lead, and you need to have a plan. This Baghdad plan, this idea of dividing it into nine sectors, saddle up Iraqi units that heretofore have not been operating in Baghdad, moving them in, putting them out front, in front of the Americans, the Americans are backup, using that basic pattern to run through all of the 114 Iraqi battalions and give them combat experience is a good way for us to start this handoff in which we hand off the full security burden to the Iraqi forces. Now, there is no guarantee that this can be done. There is no guarantee because one element of this plan is the commitment of Iraqi political leadership and the military leadership to carry out what they say they are going to do. This plan can be a blueprint for the handoff of the security burden. I would hope that Members understand that the troops that we are sending to Iraq right now are, indeed, reenforcements. Some of them are already arriving. They are the reinforcements that are necessary to execute this plan. Some 4,000 of them are going to al Anbar province where the Marines have requested them, and the balance are going to the Baghdad operation and other operations, presumably in the Sunni Triangle. This is a deployment of reinforcements, and the idea that this body or any other body would attempt to cut off American reinforcements to a military which is already engaged in combat is unacceptable. I think it is unprecedented. We have already made a vote to get into this operation. Right now we have got troops engaged in combat. When reinforcements are required, and you have troops engaged in combat, it is incumbent upon us to make sure that our policy, and our policy is directed by the Commander in Chief, it is not directed by 435 Secretaries of State, that is all the Members of Congress becoming Secretaries of State in the House and another 100 in the other body, it is not directed by 535 self-appointed Secretaries of Defense. It is directed by the Commander in Chief who was elected by all the people to lead the militaries of this country. In consultation with our military leadership, he has done that. The troops are now moving. We need to get behind them. That leads me to another issue, and that is I talked a little bit about that American sunrise and how it shines first on these stars of David and crosses at Arlington Cemetery, and then it moves across this country, takes about 3 hours to get to my hometown in San Diego and Fort Rosecrans Cemetery there on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Speaker, in the Midwest it flows over lots and lots of old factories and plants that used to represent what we called the ``arsenal of democracy.'' When we got into World War II, our allies and our adversaries realized very quickly that America had an arsenal of democracy. We had a great industrial base. We had an industrial base in which our major auto makers were able to turn immediately to making tanks and personnel carriers and all the other equipment of war. I know that in my own hometown in San Diego, we had an old facility you can still see if you drive down by the harbor that used to turn out a bomber aircraft every 60 minutes. That means they could have built the entire B-2 force in one day and had three hours left over. Everywhere across this land, because we had a strong industrial base, which were able to transform that industrial base into a wartime footing, and it was with the support of that industrial base that the armies of the United States moved across Europe, that the Marine Corps and the armies moved across the Pacific, and that we brought this war to a conclusion that favored the United States of America. An arsenal of democracy is pretty important to democracies. Today, if you want to look at a big part of the arsenal of democracy, you may have to go to some other countries. One country you may have to go to is China, because China is cheating on trade and China is acquiring hundreds of billions of American dollars, more than we are acquiring from them, and as the money piles up in China, they are using those billions of American trade dollars to buy military equipment. That is why they are able to have some 17 submarines under production today while we have a fraction of that. That is why they are able to buy and build medium-range ballistic missiles. I predict at some point, Mr. Speaker, those ballistic missiles will have an anti-ship capability that will present a major threat to the American fleet. That is why they are able to start developing a new industrial base for the development of a modern tactical aircraft program. So, Mr. Speaker, we see this one-way street on trade beginning to move the arsenal of democracy offshore. I can tell you in the past year on the Armed Services Committee I have looked at certain critical components of the arsenal of democracy, and I note that we only have one carbon fiber manufacturer left in the United States, and we only have, according to our research, one rocket fuel manufacturer left in the United States. As we look at more and more of the industries that are critical to national security, we realize that in many of them we only have one or two or three businesses or companies that are left that are capable of making particular components that are critical to America's military strength. Mr. Speaker, it is time to change and reverse this one-way street trade policy that we have acquiesced to and restore the arsenal of democracy. It is kind of funny. When China enters a trade deal with the United States or competes against an American company, since we are all talking football at this time of the year, they start with 74 points on the scoreboard before the opening kickoff. They give a 17 percent refund of their VAT tax, basically a 17 percent subsidy to this exporter who is sending out products to the United States. When our products arrive at China's shores, they give us a 17 percent penalty. That is now a 34 point spread. And then, just to make sure that we don't throw a Hail Mary and come from behind and win that particular competition on that particular product, they devalue their currency by 40 percent, and they increase the spread in points to 74 points. That means that before the opening kickoff in this competition that we call world trade between the Chinese corporation and the American business and American workers, China has 74 points on the scoreboard. Then if we lose the competition, they say, what's the matter? Can't you play football? China is cheating on trade, Mr. Speaker, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board made that clear in his preliminary speech which called this manipulation of currency an illegal subsidy. That word ``subsidy'' was subsequently removed from the speech before it was given to the Chinese leadership, but I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that that illegal subsidy and that 17 percent penalty that is given to American trade goods and the 17 percent subsidy that they give to their trade goods as they are moved for export to the United States, that 74 points on the scoreboard hurts American businesses, it hurts American workers and it erodes the arsenal of democracy. Mr. Speaker, we are going to need the arsenal of democracy at some point in the future, and we need to have a trade policy and new trade laws that say this: We are not going to live with the 74-point disparity anymore, and you can do it the easy way or the hard way. We can all start with zero points on the scoreboard, or we will put the same taxes on your goods that you put on ours, and we will both start with 74 points on the scoreboard. But we are not going to start anymore with the score being America zero, China 74. So, Mr. Speaker, I hope this is a year in which we pass a bill that calls the currency manipulation and devaluation by the central government of China what it is, which is an illegal subsidy. Let me move on to another issue, Mr. Speaker, because as that American sunrise that lit up the Arlington Cemetery at 7:24 a.m. this morning moves across the United States, about 2 hours after that, it reaches the Southwest border of America. It shines on what I call the thin green line. That is the few thousand American Border Patrol men and women who defend the borders of the United States. They have got a 2,000-mile border to defend, Mr. Speaker, all the way from San Diego, California, to Brownsville, Texas, and we owe it to them to use the best of our technology and the best of our resources to make sure that that border is defendable. Now, we asked one of our great think tanks, the Sandia Laboratory, in fact, that is one of the laboratories that is full of scientists who design our nuclear weapons, design the warheads, we asked them once to solve a problem for us. We said, what is a good way for us to stop drugs from coming across the border from the south? They thought about it for a while and came back and gave us a report, and the report said we are going to show you something that is not too complicated. How about a fence? In fact, how about a triple fence, which will slow down the smugglers enough so that your Border Patrolmen can catch them, which gives you a fighting chance to halt people that would come across illegally? Now, this fence, in fact we call it the Sandia Fence because the Sandia National Laboratory designed it, is pretty simple. It consists of a steel fence. It is right on the border. Then you have a Border Patrol road that is about 50-foot wide, and then you have about a 15- foot high fence with an overhang, and then another Border Patrol fence, and then another fence that is a shorter fence. Three fences. We built that when Republicans took control of this body in 1994 in San Diego. I can remember, because I drafted that language that went into the immigration bill that provided for that fence. Mr. Speaker, when we built that fence, and we said it had to be built, the Clinton administration did not want to build it, and President Clinton's own INS representatives fought the fence. But they had to build it, because it was the law. They said, do we have to build all three layers of fence? We sat down with them and said, well, we will tell you what; we will keep the three layers in the law, but let's build the first two, and if we don't need the third layer, we won't make you build it. Mr. Speaker, we haven't needed the third layer, because that fence, the 14-mile fence in the San Diego sector, once we built the first big piece of that, we knocked down the smuggling of people and narcotics by more than 90 percent. We eliminated the drive-through drug trucks, we eliminated the 10 murders a year that were occurring on the border by the border gangs, and we eliminated the border gangs, because the border gangs needed to be able to move back and forth, north and south. If they were pursued from the north, they would go south, if they were pursued from the south, they would go north. We took away their mobility by building that fence. Mr. Speaker, that fence works. And the new law that President Bush signed a couple of months ago mandates the extension of that fence, the San Diego fence, 854 miles across the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Mr. Speaker, I drafted that bill, that fence provision that was in the bill that was offered by Homeland Security, and the first big section that I put in was the section between Calexico, California, and Douglas, Arizona. That is about 392 miles. That is the number one smugglers' corridor, now that we have closed the San Diego-Tijuana corridor by fencing it. That 392-mile section is a section through which massive amounts of people and narcotics are being smuggled. The Department of Homeland Security has a mandate. In fact, when we wrote that law, I put in the word ``shall.'' ``Shall'' means that this is not an option, it is not a goal, it is not something that would be nice to have if you could do it. It is a mandate to the Federal Government to build that fence. There is available now appropriated and ready to go in the bank, so- to-speak, $1.2 billion. That may not build the entire 854 miles of fence, but it gives you an awfully good big piece of it. Something we found out about the San Diego fence was after we had built even a third of the San Diego fence, because we channelized the smugglers, especially the drug trucks and they had fewer places to go, we were able to concentrate our border agents in those channelized openings that were still unfenced and we caught lots of them, and our interdiction rate went way up, even before we completed the fence. So, Mr. Speaker, there is nothing so compelling in this country as an idea that the people support which has been passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President and represents a law that came right from the heartland of this great country and which needs to be executed. The Department of Homeland Security has the obligation of executing this law, and I look forward to working with my colleagues, Democrat and Republican, over the next several months and making sure that this fence gets started. We can start it concurrently in separate sections. You can have one contractor build it from mile 1 to mile 5, the next guy go from mile 5 to mile 10 and so on. We can immediately see a reduction in the amount of people and narcotics that are smuggled across this border. Let me tell you why we have to build this border fence, Mr. Speaker: Since 9/11, it has become clear that border security is no longer primarily an immigration issue. It is a national security issue. We have to know, very simply, who is coming into our country and what they are bringing with them. You know something else? We have got 250,000 criminal aliens right now in our Federal penitentiaries and our State and local prisons and jails, a quarter of a million criminal aliens. They cost us as much as $50,000 apiece to incarcerate for a year. That means that each year we spend around $3 billion in cash money out of our Treasury to incarcerate the people that come across this unfenced section of the southern border of the United States. We would save enough money in one year on incarceration a loan to build the entire fence. Let's build it, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.