Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

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

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

Mr. HUNTER. I just say to the gentleman, it is permanent removal of the housing cap.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is not a certain thing. So telling all the families that they absolutely will not have housing is not a certain thing at this point. I think the gentleman and I and others can work to make sure there is not a seam between 2005 and 2006.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to thank the gentleman for his important work in this area, and also mention that the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) and I worked up a provision that is in the base bill also, that I think, after reading the Taguba report, very much follows the Taguba report in terms of clarifying policy. Let me go over a couple of things that we require to be done. Ensuring that commanders of detention facilities and commanders of interrogation facilities provide all assigned personnel, including contractor personnel, with training, and documented acknowledgment of receiving training, regarding the Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of prisoners; and establish SOPs, standard operating procedures, for the treatment of detainees. We also provide that periodic unannounced and announced inspections be made by officers, something that was sadly lacking in the research and investigation that we have done and the review of the Taguba report. Also prohibiting contact between male guards and female detainees and between female guards and male detainees, except in exigent circumstances. Clearly, there are many dimensions of a prison that are akin, in ways, to locker rooms, and it makes no sense to have substantial contact between male guards and female detainees or female guards and male detainees. So we have spelled that out. So we have put in, working this in a bipartisan way, we have put in a number of new clarifications, which, while they are manifested into standard operating procedure, represent the emphasis that we would like to place on them in light of the Taguba report and the hearings and briefings that we have received in this matter. Having said that, I want to thank the gentleman from Missouri and the gentleman from Massachusetts for working on this language also, and all the Members that worked on it. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to reclaim the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and let me just say something briefly in response to my colleague who just spoke. We are not abdicating any oversight on this issue. In fact, we have had as much congressional hearing time as we have had in the past going to war, sending the entire Nation to war. We have had massive hearings on this issue. We have had briefings. In fact, we finished a briefing yesterday, with the majority of the House, with the Secretary of Defense and experts on this issue that carried well until after 6:30. The majority of the House Members, by my count, appeared. The Secretary did not leave until the last question was answered. In my estimation, we have given as much publicity to this as we did to the invasion of Normandy, looking over the old stacks of publicity that attended that fairly important event. Now, I would say this to my dear colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman). We have 141,000 people whose lives are in danger. They need their leadership. Their battlefield leadership is now back here rehashing this issue. The first conviction was made today on this issue. Does the gentleman think we need to have congressional oversight overlooking the court-martial that just concluded in a conviction and a punishment being meted out? And I would say to my friend that the punishments in the military system are meted out much swifter and much more surely than they are on the domestic side. We have already had a conviction. So your statement to the effect that there is no oversight, your implication there is no oversight is not true. It is false. There is massive oversight. And in looking at the Taguba report and embedding many of those recommendations in this law, we have actually made changes that are a function or have arisen from that oversight. So the question is one of balance. We have 141,000 people who need leadership in their operations. We need to make sure they have all the equipment that they need. We need to make sure they have their operational leadership. So does the gentleman want another 15 hearings? Maybe we should cancel every piece of congressional business for the entire year so that the issue at Abu Ghraib can be milked until the election. I do not think that is good for either side of the aisle. We have given an enormous amount of publicity to those seven people. I have a stack of Bronze Stars on my desk. Those people will never get any publicity. They certainly will not hear the gentleman from California talking about them, and probably not me, because we will not have a chance to get to them because we will be concentrating on those seven bad apples ad infinitum. Judgment and balance are important in this business. And for that reason, I think after massive hearings on both sides of the Capitol, after enormous publicity, with six full investigations now attending these seven people, separate investigations, and prosecutions and court-martials going forward, I think we need to lead our troops and we need to provide them what they need; and that means we need to refocus on this war, and we need to win this war. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton).

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

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

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

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 myself 2 minutes. Let me just say in response to my colleague who has just spoken that we did something that was unprecedented in this bill, which was look into the future, into the last several months of this year, and decide that, even though we all agreed and the budget chairman announced on the floor and to the world that we were going to need supplementals of $50 billion this next year, we decided that we did not want to have any strain on the troops in the closing months of this year before Congress, after the election, could put together another supplemental. So we provided this bridge, which even the gentleman will admit carries us well into the next year, into the next calendar year; and we did fully provide for the additional forces that we have in the field, the 1st Armored Division, which is going to be an additional $750,000. For all of the armor upgrades, we have got roughly $1 billion for armor upgrades in Humvees and trucks, for all of the modernization that the chief of staff of the Army needs for modularity, that is, building this new brigade centric force for the U.S. Army. The reason we do not go off into the new year and say, okay, should it be $50 billion, should it be $75 billion is very simple. We cannot see the future. We do not know how much weight this new Iraqi military is going to be able to take on their shoulders, how fast we are going to be able to make this handoff; and all of those things drive the costs of operation. But this takes good care of the troops for a long period of time during this bridge period; and that is the reason we did it, to give the troops confidence. It is above and beyond the $422 billion bill that we have. I think, Mr. Chairman, it does a good job in looking out for the troops. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, whose subcommittee oversees the most massive part of modernization and our biggest programs for aircraft and land systems, who has done a great job working this issue. (Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh), who chairs the Subcommittee on Total Force, which oversees the 2.5 million Americans in uniform.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller), the gentleman who is the author, the father of this great benefit package for military survivors that was embedded in this bill and is good news for hundreds of thousands of families.

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, 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. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), a very distinguished member of the committee.

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. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder) for his hard work on the bill. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hayes), a gentleman with a real heart for our soldiers.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger), who has great expertise in the area of defense.