Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this is a number of amendments, some of them technical in nature, others amendments cleared with both sides. They include amendments by myself, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks), the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings), the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Manzullo), the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Brown), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Johnson), the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird), the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley), the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith), the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Marshall), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson) and by the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton). Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. I appreciate all the comments from both sides of this debate, and Mr. Chairman, Taiwan is our friend, and these are people of freedom who fought for freedom and who recessed to that island across the straits to maintain a free society. We have many relationships now with Mainland China that are very clear economic relationships in principle. We reserve the right to have friends, and encompassed in that friendship is the right to have our military establishment relate and interrelate with their military establishment. That is not a bad thing, and that is very simply what the Ryun amendment does. I have read the statement by DOD that they support it. They say the requirement for a senior official/officer education and training program is supportable. The amendment properly focuses on areas in the defense of Taiwan which pose greatest threats, submarines and missiles. We know that greater China is acquiring a vast military arsenal, much of it being acquired with their vast surplus of trade cash. It is absolutely appropriate that we maintain this friendship with Taiwan and in that friendship engage our military leadership, and I would support the amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, this is about the most basic part of our military strategy. The gentleman who just spoke said if we do not use these weapons, they are a total waste, and people used to say why do we have all these nuclear weapons that could kill the Russians 100 times over? The reason we had them was so we would never have to kill a single Russian because we would have a deterrent. Whom do we have to deter? Do we deter a private in a barrack? Do we deter a housewife in her home in the land of our adversary? Do we deter children in a school or people in a hospital? The answer is no. The very best deterrent target is the people who pull the trigger, and that is the leadership of the adversarial nation, that is, the people who make the decision to attack the United States. Those are the people who like to go deep. Hitler had a bunker. Saddam Hussein had a bunker. The people in North Korea have bunkers. We have to have this type of a program to hold the leadership at risk. This is deterrence. Vote ``no'' on this amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I offer amendments en bloc.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, that is correct. It is an unfortunate error that the amendment was not printed in the report. The Ortiz amendment was adopted by the full committee.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Mrs. Wilson). (Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that in the engrossment of the bill, H.R. 4200, the Clerk be authorized to correct section numbers, punctuation, cross-references, and the table of contents, and to make such other technical and conforming changes as may be necessary to reflect the actions of the House in amending the bill.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Ferguson).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I would just say to the gentleman, no, I am not familiar with that situation.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I would just say to the gentleman that I will be happy to work with the gentleman from Missouri on this issue.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), chairman of that very important committee, the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), who has worked so hard on the chem-bio protection issues. (Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), who has done so much great work on this committee.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Neugebauer).

Mr. HUNTER. The gentleman is correct. The size and location of the demonstration project have been left to the discretion of the Secretary of Defense. I will add, however, the whole point of doing a demonstration project is to test whether a legislative idea will produce the results that its proponents intend. The Secretary should conduct a thorough and complete demonstration program.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute to thank the gentlewoman who just spoke, my seatmate in California, to say something about contractors. God bless our contractors. The last figure I saw was that the contractors for Halliburton, who have to run Ambush Alley, bringing our convoys, bringing food to the troops up through the heart of the insurgency country in Iraq, have now lost 34 of their personnel, killed in action supplying American troops. We have always had lots of contractors for the very simple reason that for every troop you have out there with a rifle, you need roughly 10 people to support him down the supply line; and a lot of those people have always been contractors. We have had them in all theaters of the war in this last century and, obviously, in Afghanistan and Iraq. The four individuals who were killed in Fallujah were American heroes, and they were trying to advance the American cause with every bit as pure a heart and sense of honor, in fact, as mostly former military personnel, as any of our people in the United States Marine Corps or Army in that area of operation. So I think that we should appreciate our contractors perhaps more than has been noted on the House floor. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson), a very good member of the committee.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HUNTER. I would just say to my good friend that he and his colleagues from New Jersey and others can certainly count on my support.

Mr. HUNTER

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