Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, let me remind the gentleman that neither of us belongs to organized political parties. We are Republicans and Democrats. But I just want to remind the gentleman, too, that we are stretched between two cross-strains which are very familiar to this House. One is the strain and the discipline that is required for fiscal discipline. And we all know that, and I think we have to give some credence to the Committee on the Budget chairman's statement, because the chairman of the Committee on the Budget does stand here and he does take fusillades from both sides about spending money and about not having rules. On the other hand, we then have these extraordinary circumstances in which we beat up on the Committee on the Budget chairman for sticking with those rules. And I told the gentleman that my position is, even though we own the turf on this as the authorizing committee, we think it is so extraordinary and so compelling we are willing to give up that turf and pass it in this particular bill. But I would recommend to the gentleman that he talk with the members of the Committee on the Budget and remember that they have an obligation, too, and try to work through that obligation.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4879, the Military Housing Improvement Act of 2004. We have spent the last several hours debating points of order and budgetary implications of a provision in the Military Construction Appropriations Act to address the housing privatization program. H.R. 4879, I am pleased to say, goes straight to the heart of the matter by raising the cap on the housing privatization program by $500 million, enough to permit DOD to continue the program through fiscal year 2005. As Member after Member has pointed out today, the Military Housing Privatization Program has been an unqualified success. By leveraging the interest of private sector developers and property managers, housing privatization improves and manages military family housing better, more quickly, and at lower cost than our traditional military construction model. To date, the housing privatization program has leveraged a government cash contribution of only $500 million to build approximately $5.6 billion in housing construction. Furthermore, privatized housing is a tremendous improvement over existing DOD housing facilities. Privatized homes are often equipped with new appliances, built to modern standards, well-maintained, and are parts of communities. This is in stark contrast to the patchwork of poorly maintained housing for which DOD is known. Despite the success of the housing privatization program, a legislative cap will soon bring a halt to the program by preventing DOD from entering into new privatization contracts after November 2004. The FY 2005 National Defense Authorization Act contains a partial fix to this problem. It eliminates the cap in fiscal year 2006. However, it leaves a gap between November 2004 and October 2005 during which DOD would be unable to sign any privatization contracts that would count against the cap. As a result, most projects DOD plans to begin in fiscal year 2005 would be delayed until October 2005. This would affect approximately 24,000 family housing units at at least 16 installations nationwide. H.R. 4879 addresses this problem by increasing the cap on the program by $500 million, enough to allow DOD to proceed with its privatization program through FY 2005. The program is a success. I urge my colleagues to join with me in ensuring that it continues by supporting this bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, on that optimistic note, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me just address my friend who just spoke and all Members. This bill does have meaning because every time the full House manifests its will and gives a good majority vote, a good solid vote, that is a very important boost to the process. I would just tell the gentleman that we are going to make sure that by the time the smoke clears and the dust clears in this process, we are going to have these 24,000 units released for construction. It is important to everyone. I might say, also, and I appreciate my friend from Florida and all the great work he has done on this, and all the members of the Committee on Armed Services, that we do have this problem fixed from 2006 on. It is this gap, this bridge this year that we need to fix. I might mention to my colleagues that the gentleman from Iowa is the author of this provision. I think that bespeaks of his good intentions to get this problem taken care of. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), chairman of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. HUNTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on the bill under consideration.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4879) to increase the military housing private investment cap.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, let me just say that we have obviously a difference of opinion as to how we get this particular measure forward, how we move it forward. We have got people of goodwill on both sides. I have recommended today, even though we are the authorizing committee, that we give up some of our turf today and let this thing pass on the appropriations bill. There is obviously a problem with that occurring. We have got this measure up, which is authored, in fact, by the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), chairman of the Committee on the Budget, as evidence of the fact that he wants to get this thing to move forward; and I think if we pass this with an overwhelming vote, manifesting that will of the House is going to help this process. We have got a long way to go before the dust settles on the spending bills this year. We are going to make sure that this problem is solved this year. The exact parliamentary road for that obviously has not been determined, as is, I think, evidenced by the debate that has taken place. But I would just ask Members from all positions, from all points, who have one piece of common ground, and that is to get this very important housing measure passed, to work together on this thing and move forward.

Mr. HUNTER. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time from my very good colleague, and I just remind him that no objection has been heard yet on the MILCON bill, and I would just would ask the gentleman, the chairman of the Budget Committee, to look at this as a very extraordinary situation, because it is an extraordinary situation in that we have a very unusual scoring application by CBO that is not endorsed by OMB and not, obviously, endorsed by us and does not make good sense. That is that the entire economic implication of this 24,000 units is being scored at one time, and that is a very unusual thing; and secondly, that we have a very unusual circumstance with this being the centerpiece of quality of life for our military folks. So let me just suggest to my friend that we all have a job in this House and that the Committee on the Budget has undertaken to follow their duty, their obligation, in the manner they best see fit; and I would suggest to the gentleman that talking with them and working with them on this may be the way to get this thing done, and I would hope that the gentleman would talk with the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. Generally speaking, the authorizing committee, the Committee on Armed Services in this case, would be heavily attending this particular debate to object to the appropriators making policy on an appropriations bill. In this case, we are not doing that. We do strongly support raising this cap, and the reason we want to do that is because for over the last several years, we have played by the rules. We have done everything, I think, according to the rules. We have engaged with the Committee on the Budget, and the chairman of the Committee on the Budget is a very fine individual and has worked hard and diligently with us over the last many years to put together good defense budgets, as has the Republican leadership. We have got a very good package this year; but the one thing we have not been able to accomplish is to raise this cap, and at risk right now are some 24,000 units. Now, I would just implore the Committee on the Budget and their very distinguished leader, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), to work with us on this one. Let us pull together on this one. This is one time when the authorizers are willing to not protect their turf, because things do not come wrapped in neat packages; and this is one of those times when we are going to have to make a package that is a little bit different from the standard package. That means doing everything with very vigilant protection of turf by authorizers during the appropriations process. We support this, and in the end we have got lots of folks that are serving in theatre right now. Quality of life is still a major, major issue with our military families; and we have seized on this new method, this privatization of vastly increasing that quality of life. In the interest of doing that, we are willing to give up this piece of turf at this time and go forward with this fix on this very difficult problem so that we can get more military housing for our military families, and I would just implore the Committee on the Budget to hang with us on this one. Let us all pull together, let us get this thing through, and I would hope that no one objects when it gets to the appropriate point in the debate.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. The gentleman made a good point when he said that sometimes the news media follows the old adage, if it bleeds, it leads. Because that is what a TV station will use to get viewership for their news hour so they can sell Coca-Cola and whatever type of advertising they have got. And they know that violence does attract a certain core audience. Now, the problem with running wall-to-wall car wrecks if you are a local TV station is that you give a misleading impression of the traffic situation in a given town. If you go in, if you are a new TV station in town and you say, because we do not have a lot of good substantial news, we will do wall-to-wall car wrecks, and your news guys may say, we only have two car wrecks a day; and you say, run them over and over again. If the average person watches that news station and sees wall-to-wall car wrecks on the news, he will be given the impression if he drives out on the freeway in that town, he has a 50 percent chance of being in an accident. The car wrecks in isolation may be true. They are accurate pictures, but if you run them back-to-back, wall-to-wall, all the time, all car wrecks, you are going to give a misleading impression on the traffic situation on that town. Similarly, if you run wall-to-wall pictures of burning tankers. If there was one tanker blown up in a country that is as big as the State of California and has 25 million people, and you run one explosion over and over and over, you give the impression that the entire country is on fire. It is not. That is not to say it is not dangerous, because it is dangerous; and that is not to say it is not tough. I want to give a description of what I saw last time I was there. When we went into Balad, we were there in time for the daily mortaring, where a couple of mortar rounds are thrown in by the insurgents in this big former fighter base for Saddam Hussein, which is now one of our main logistics bases. Well, we were out looking at the gun trucks at that time; and as these rounds came in about 1,000 yards away, all the GIs just walked, they did not panic or stampede. They just walked, did not even stop their conversations, to the shelters that were nearby. Our general said, Quick, get into the nearest building. It happened to be a movie theater. We went in there, and he said, get away from the glass, go indoors. We went into the actual theater portion of this building. I opened up the door and went in. It was a big church service. It was on Sunday. There were 400 GIs there. They had a great preacher who was preaching. They had a 100 GI choir, a band, had a couple of steel guitars up there, and everybody had their combat gear sitting there. Not only were the politicians forced to go into the church service because of mortaring, we were forced to stay there because of mortaring. We asked when we could leave, and they said, You are going to have to wait till the service was over, and so we waited until the service was over and we left. My point is, those folks are standing firm. Our people in uniform are standing firm. The American people should stand firm. It was interesting to come back here and watch the talking heads on television whip themselves into a tizzy, and in my mind's eye I had those great folks in uniform who were doing their job very coolly, very professionally and with a sense of purpose; and with respect to a sense of purpose, that is an important thing. Just saying, Well, I support the troops, but they are wasting their lives is not enough. If you tell people that what they are doing, whether they are a truck driver for a living or they are a soldier, is without value. Then you are really denigrating that person. You are really taking the value away from their occupation. So those who say, Well, I would support the troops, but what they are doing is a waste, is not a support of the troops. Now, you may say, Well, that is okay, I think my opinion outbalances whether or not I support the troops but I am not a supporter of the troops, and it does a disservice to the troops. I want to let you know when we went over, and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes), a great Member from El Paso, was over with us and the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), we let the troops know that we valued their service and valued them. I would be happy to continue to yield to the gentleman from New Hampshire.

Mr. HUNTER. Let me thank the gentleman for his great initiative because I am just a cog in this wheel and both gentlemen, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller), has been a leader and put together, drafted the provisions that we all got behind that gave these great survivor benefits which heretofore had not been coming. And the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller) is to be congratulated on that. The gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bradley) has been a real leader in making sure that we have this momentum to rebuild the military; and not only do we have the 30,000 increase in Army end strength in our bill, but we also have an increase of some 9,000 Marines. I think that is important also. The Marines are out there deployed a great deal of the time. They are kind of a 911 for us. It always has one MEU or one larger unit. A MEU is a Marine Expeditionary Unit, a little bit bigger than a battalion, out on patrol, so to speak, in the world's oceans, ready to move in quickly if there is a problem. The interesting thing is this all reflects on the people. If you have a family sitting around the breakfast table trying to decide whether to re-up or not, the fact that the dad has not been home for two or three Christmases is going to have an effect on whether he stays in. This is a corporate decision that is made by the family. So having enough people is a very, very important thing. It is also standing military that is not committed that is an insurance policy for our country. It makes sense to have an insurance policy. I want to thank the gentleman for his great work and just ask the gentleman, he has been to Iraq, and I would like to ask both gentlemen what their take is now. We all know it is a tough, hard road; but our troops are walking down that road. We are starting to make this hand- off. We have handed off the government of Iraq to Iraqis, and we are starting to hand off the military. What do you think?

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for his comments. I would like to ask the same question of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller), who has been a great member of the committee and who has really worked this issue.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding at this point, because I think that it does reflect on the judgment of Senator Kerry, but I think more reflective of his judgment with respect to intelligence is the fact that Senator Kerry voted to cut intelligence all during the 1990s. Now what we have discovered is that we cut intelligence, we cut our operatives, our operating officers by more than 20 percent during the 1990s, during the Clinton administration; and that meant that we cut all of the people that gave us information because each of those operating officers has stables of people who talk to them, whether they are taxicab drivers or people in a bureaucracy in some foreign country or just people that have a certain insight into knowledge, people who are in the room when somebody bad makes a decision to hurt Americans. We lost 40 percent of our assets, of our intelligence assets. So we had all this information coming in, and we cut out 40 percent of it. So we are like Ford Motor Company cutting out 40 percent of its dealerships and then wondering why the number of Fords sold has dropped dramatically. Well, while we were doing that during the Clinton administration in the 1990s, Senator Kerry tried to cut it more, and in 1994 he offered a massive cut that received from fellow Democrats extreme criticism, one of them saying this was going to cut the eyes and ears out of our Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and another one saying that this was going to be a disservice to our troops. And then in 1996, Senator Kerry offered a bill, and I understand that he did not get a single cosponsor. There was not anybody in the Senate, Democrat or Republican, who was liberal enough to sign up to this one, because this cut $1.5 billion out of the intelligence budget. This is in 1996 when we really needed it, when we needed to rebuild intelligence; and he cut what would have been $300 million per year for 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 and the year 2000. Luckily, not a single Senator was liberal enough to join him in that. And it goes back to a statement that he made that was reported in one of the Harvard newspapers when he was first running for office, and he said that for practical purposes, he was going to for practical purposes defund the CIA, just take away the money. I think that Senator Kerry always looked at the CIA in the same way as people look at it when they go into these movies and the movie is made through the prism of some left-winger in Hollywood; and in these Hollywood movies the CIA is always out there moving drugs and hurting people and being basically a bad influence. In reality, the people that serve in the CIA and our other intelligence agencies are wonderful people who serve this country, get no kudos, get no parades down Main Street, put themselves in dangerous positions for our country and often die in small, isolated places around the world for the United States of America. But the problem in judgment is not Sandy Berger, the image of Sandy Berger stuffing stuff into his clothes and leaving the classified intel room, as John Kerry's adviser. The real crisis in judgment, I think, is when John Kerry got up and tried to cut an already debilitated CIA, one where the Clinton administration had sliced the top right off of it, cut out 40 percent of our assets, and he came in with further cuts. And he called our programs, the intelligence programs, silly programs. Nobody calls them silly programs today. We wish we had had more. We wish we had had people sitting in those meetings when decisions were made to hurt Americans. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman. Another question I think is a commonsense question that the average American would ask is, well, if you took this stuff home that was highly classified, very sensitive, it is against the law to take it home, and you took it home. And you are reading it and you are a former security advisor, you know that it is highly classified, well, if you wad it up and throw it in the garbage, which is almost unthinkable, almost unthinkable, would you not, when you get called up by the people who have run the collection of that information, would you not then go try to retrieve it? Would you not go out to your garbage and dig through it and say, why did I just lose it and throw it away?

Mr. HUNTER. I agree with that and I want to thank, also, the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bradley) for his great work on the committee and especially his focus on making sure our troops have everything that they need. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow my good colleagues who just talked about what they consider to be the free trade debacle of the 1990s with a gentle reminder that that debacle commenced with the 1994 NAFTA vote under the Clinton administration, strongly supported by President Clinton, and I think, strongly supported by then Senator Kerry. At the time when we started that, I think we had a $3 billion trade surplus with Mexico. Shortly thereafter, we had a $15 billion annual trade loss. I am reminded with respect to China that one of Mr. Clinton's strongest contributors, who happened to be the chief executive officer of the Loral Corporation, found that he had, after he had seriously violated the rules of transferring technology, had transferred technology to the Chinese with respect to their launch capability, because in their satellite launches they use these Long March rockets to do their satellite launches, and they use that same rocketry to aim nuclear warheads at their adversary cities, several of which are in the United States of America. And when Loral violated the restrictions on transferring this weapons technology, which puts all Americans at risk, he was allowed to continue to make those sales; and Loral was allowed to continue to make those sales, prematurely, in my judgment, and there was, I think, a very strong link to the Clinton administration manifested in a $300,000-plus contribution to President Clinton. So I remember the free trade, the threshold free trade vote well, which a lot of my Republican colleagues do not agree with me on, and a number of Democrats do not agree with me on; but I do remember that it was done by President Clinton, and I wanted to add that little historic footnote. I wanted to engage in a little dialogue with my good friend, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), who has been to Iraq a number of times, four times, I believe, and is one of the Members who has really focused on Iraq. I would just start off by saying, Mr. Speaker, that it is a long, hard road in Iraq. We understand that. It has been tough for our soldiers. It is a difficult environment. It is full of sweat and dust and high temperatures, and sometimes blood. But we are undertaking and are now well on our way to making this hand-off, both politically and militarily, to the Iraqi people in Iraq, and giving them the best running start at freedom that country has ever had. And, in doing so, we are on our way to neutralizing Iraq as a potential springboard for terrorism in the years to come, which will accrue to the benefit of many, many generations of Americans. So the cause is right. It is a just cause. We are standing up that military right now. We have General David Petraeus, one of our best military leaders, former commander of the 101st Airborne in Iraq, as a leader of that stand-up and training of the Iraqi forces. He has put together the schools for officers, for noncoms, for enlisted personnel; and those forces are starting to pick up that weight a little bit now and carry it in various battles and clashes that they have had around Iraq with the insurgents. So, Mr. Speaker, I would simply want to report that while this is not an easy task, it is a very difficult task, the United States is carrying the ball and the folks who wear the uniform of the United States are doing a wonderful job for us. Having said that, I would like to yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) for his observations on this very important issue.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I will tell him that I am just one of many, many great folks on that committee, I am just part of the group there, because we have really wonderful people on both sides of the aisle on the Committee on Armed Services. The committee has been working hard. Our members have been working very hard. This has been a challenge. The IEDs, these Improvised Explosive Devices that are detonated remotely now, are an enormous challenge; and the deadliness of those is manifested and can be illustrated as you walk the halls of the hospital there in Ramstein, Germany, or over here in Bethesda at Walter Reed when they come back. So we moved out smartly and the services moved out very quickly to armor up some 8,000-plus Humvee vehicles, basically our follow-on utility vehicle, and we are also working hard on other means of trying to stop these very deadly systems. But in the end, if we look at the combat that took place in Iraq, it is interesting, with this high-tech world, a lot of it is just great, great people. So we have done a few good things; but we have had some really, really wonderful people wearing the uniform of the United States. The last citation I picked up before I went over there was for a Marco Martinez, who was a sergeant in the Marine Corps who won the Navy cross for taking an enemy position, taking on and taking out four insurgents with grenades and rifle fire. That is one of hundreds of high awards for valor and literally thousands of lesser awards. We have issued some 16,000 Bronze Stars in that theater and over 127 Silver Stars. Mr. Speaker, those people, the television this year and the movie screens were filled with the invasion of Normandy, but the kids that wear the uniform of the United States, and they are kids, because a lot of them are teenagers, a few of them just in their early 20s, are every bit as courageous and dedicated as that great generation that hit the beaches in Normandy and hit the beaches in the South Pacific. So I want to thank the gentleman for all the great work that he has done, all the intelligence work that he has done along with his colleagues. Saddam Hussein really rattled on when he was there in the court, and I do not know if that is an equivalent to a preliminary hearing or a time in which one enters their plea; but he said as he rattled on, he said one thing that was true. He said, in essence, if it was not for George Bush and those Americans, this would not be taking place, and that was true. He would not be there if it was not for George Bush and about 300,000 great Marines and soldiers and sailors and airmen. And I think of all of those great units, the First Marine Division, 101st Airborne, the Third Army, the Fourth Infantry Division, now taken over by the Big Red One, the first infantry division up there in Tikrit, and the First Cav and the First Armored Division, which has been centered there in Baghdad for so long, right in the heart of the tough operations, and now the First Striker Brigade up in the north, if it was not for the Americans, the people of Iraq would have no chance at freedom and we, the Free World, would have no chance at neutralizing Iraq as a potential springboard for terrorism. So I want to thank the gentleman. I also want to thank the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bradley) and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller) for coming on down here. We have spent a lot of time working this issue and going over to theater, and all of the great work that they have done.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I think he has raised probably the most important question for the next several weeks. One other question we might ask is when Mr. Berger took these documents home, he obviously took them home for a purpose, and presumably he reviewed them at home, he looked at them. That would be another opportunity to say, I have got classified documents; they should go back. And it would certainly be a time when you would not scrunch one of them up and destroy it, because you realize you have got something that the Archives needs. And so it is a very, very strange situation, and I think the gentleman has posited the most important questions. And maybe in the next 5 or 6 or 7 days we are going to have some answers. I hope the gentleman would stay around and we will talk about Iraq, because the gentleman, along with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller) and the gentleman from New Hampshire have a wealth of experience with respect to the Iraq theatre. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Florida, a great member of the committee.

Mr. HUNTER. Well, I would just say to my friend that, at worst, we do not put documents in our socks; and I have not seen the definitive statement on this, but one, at least according to the news reports, and I think that is why we need to get more information on this, one of the staff members at the Archives said he put some of them into his socks. Now, I think that they keep the temperature fairly temperate in that room, and you do not need to warm your feet. And just the idea of a national security adviser putting documents into his socks, I think raises a few questions. There are more questions here than there are answers, and I think we all want to believe the best of our fellow man, our fellow government servant, who, as you said, was national security adviser. But another thing that I think the American people have to ponder on is that he did not, according to the news reports, say, Yes, I have got them until he was called by the archivists, who said, ``You have got secure documents.'' And at that point he said, ``Yes, I believe I do.'' So you are right. These are not documents that are mixed up. It is a standard procedure to divest yourself of any notes that you have written, but also divest yourself of the documents, as it is to turn your car off when you pull your car into the parking garage. You turn it off. And the idea that you left the car running, and then you did not go down and turn the car off until somebody called you and told you the car was still running and that that was all done unintentionally is, I think, something that Mr. Berger needs to continue to explain. Because one thing about the 9/11 Commission, the reports are out, one they were afraid of, and I need to yield to my friend from Florida, is that bits and pieces, little bitty statements out of that report, two and three words, will be used for news triggers, little statements that people made. And they will be plucked out and they will be used politically on one side or the other and they will be used by the news media, and so just a couple of words, one sentence, can have enormous effect, enormous effect. I know the more liberal members of the media have pointed to one sentence that somebody used in one of the weapons of mass destruction analyses, where said it does not matter what we find, because this war is going to happen. Now, that was not a statement of policy. That was a statement by some guy who did not control policy, but it was plucked out and used and probably put in front of 50 million people. So little bitty words and little bitty sentences and little bitty phrases can be pulled out. And so the idea that we now have an incomplete reservoir of facts is, I think, disturbing to the American people. If you lined up all the people in the United States and said, who would take those documents out, the President's former national security adviser would be the last gentleman that you would suspect. And on the other hand, apparently truth is stranger than fiction. It has happened. I think there is some explaining to do.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I will tell the gentleman about another operation that took place. For those folks who now have given the distorted view to the world that somehow the Americans are worse than Saddam Hussein, that we have tortured people and we are the emblems of torture because they have run these pictures back to back, including the picture where a person is pretending to shock a person. In the briefings I received, they never turned on the electricity, but they have given that picture out to literally millions of viewers with the clear impression that that person is being shocked with electricity. When I was in the hospital there at Ramstein, one of the surgeons had a disk, and on the disk was a video of Saddam Hussein's people amputating the hands of people in one of the villages because they had not done enough for the economy. They were businessmen, and the growth rate of the economy had not been high enough. So he thought he would give a little example and amputate their hands. So for people that want to see real torture, real inhumane treatment, it is there to see, but of course, if we give that disk to the news media, I am sure that nobody will. In fact, I think those people were in the capital. I think the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) brought them over for a reception, and as I recall, there were almost no stories about those people. There was a story or two about the young kids, the 14-year-old kids who wrote anti-Saddam graffiti on their blackboard in high school. They were promptly taken out and hanged.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I thank the gentleman from New Hampshire also, and would ask if he has any closing words he would like to say.

Mr. HUNTER. And the Kurdish mothers who died there by poison gas, with their babies in their arms, those were representations of real inhumane treatment. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Florida.