Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. What is interesting, too, Mr. Speaker, is that those who have stepped back from the fray, some of the Arab nations, like Saudi Arabia, have now discovered that they are targets; that you cannot, by staying away from this fight that the Americans have taken on, because we face our threats head on and take them on, they thought somehow they could stay out of the battle and they could stay away from the brutality of the terrorist groups. But they have discovered now they cannot do that. Jordan is discovering it cannot avoid this conflict. And I think there is another thing, too, that the world understands, and perhaps more leaders in the world need to be educated on this. We won World War II. We could have enslaved Germany and Japan. And certainly after what Japan did to us with the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese people were told by their military leaders to expect us to be as brutal to them as they had been to other people. They decapitated our POWs. They killed about a third of them. They killed 100,000 people when they took Nan-King, China. They speared live people on their bayonet courses. They captured Chinese civilians. They did all these brutal, horrible things, and they warned their people, they are now going to do to us what we have done to them. But American GIs walked down the streets of Tokyo and handed out Hershey bars. That character has not changed. When we look at the guys walking down the streets of Baghdad with a bunch of kids standing around them, we see the same character. In fact, many of those guys are the grandchildren of people who served in World War II and the children of people who served in Vietnam. That takes me to one thing, too, that I thought was very relevant, and that is the fight over the Presidency and Senator Kerry's participation in the Vietnam War, for which he should be credited, but also the accountability that he should take for what he said about his fellow GIs. If we were to take three of the statements Senator Kerry has said, the one where he said 80 percent of us were stoned on dope 24 hours a day; the one where he said that we murdered 200,000 people, that was two of those statements; and the one where he said that we ravaged the countryside, cutting off limbs and murdering people in a manner, quote, reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, if Senator Kerry had said that our GIs in Iraq, as they were driving up that country, if he had come on television and said the American soldiers in Iraq are stoned 24 hours a day, 80 percent of them; that they have murdered 200,000 Iraqis, and they are ravaging Iraq in a manner reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, the American people would be picketing his office by the tens of thousands, and he would be on his way out immediately. So if we just juxtapose and take off that word Vietnam from the statement he made in 1971, where he said American GIs were ravaging Vietnam like Ghengis Khan and had murdered 200,000 people, if we took out Vietnam and put Iraq on it, I think Americans today can understand why a lot of Vietnam veterans feel no close kinship to Senator Kerry. Because those guys that were driving up there through the heart of Iraq taking that shot and shell and heading for Baghdad, those kids were the same guys we had in Vietnam. Many of them were the sons and grandsons. Same character, same characteristics, same sense of honor, and doing the same great thing for the people. Lastly, I remember the pictures of the people, of all the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who tried to swim after the Americans after we left Vietnam. I remember also the pictures of the people being held in the Hong Kong camps who were now going to be forcibly repatriated back to what I guess Mr. Kerry's cohorts would call the people's working paradise in Vietnam. They were holding on to the guards and they were shrieking and they were beside themselves. They would do anything and had to be sedated to be finally put on the planes to be carried back to Communist Vietnam. That showed, to a large degree, the character of the Americans that had been in Vietnam. If we had been bad to the people, they would not have tried to swim after us after we left. And they are today in our populations by the hundreds of thousands. So I thought about that when I watched that embedded news following our kids in the 1st Marine Division in Iraq and following the 101st Airborne and the 3rd Army and the 4th Infantry Division. Same people, same GIs, same good people.

Mr. HUNTER. Well, I think American Vietnam veterans should simply look at his statements, and if they agree with those statements, if they did those things, and they think that is accurate, then they should vote for Mr. Kerry.

Mr. HUNTER. Stay steady.

Mr. HUNTER. On that point, too, I would say to my good friend from Virginia, one thing that I think Americans understand is that we now live in an age where we have to preempt, we have to go abroad, we have to go after the bad guys. That is what this President has done aggressively. He has gone after the bad guys. Up to that point we had had attacks on the Cole, we had attacks on embassies, we had terrorist acts around the world and we threw a few cruise missiles. We got a pharmacy knocked out, a pharmaceutical plant, and a relatively empty training ground in Afghanistan and two Chihuahuas and I do not think we hit the Chihuahuas under a previous administration, and I am being facetious. Actually, they were not effective enough to get Chihuahuas. So we had a very limited response to terrorist acts against our people. It killed our people. This President has gone after the bad guys in a furious way, and we have taken out terrorists in places where they never thought we would show up. We had the 10th Mountain Division guys come up over the top of those mountains at 10,000 feet elevation and, they killed these guys at close range in their foxholes and their fighting positions. We had people who went to meeting places where they thought they were totally meeting in secret, except for a team of Navy SEALS who had shown up before they did by great exertion and got there ahead of them. We have got American Marines right now locked in firefights at close range in Fallujah, where literally one mud wall may separate our forces and automatic weapons fire coming from the other side. So we have gone after the bad guys aggressively and there have been some rewards, and I think Americans reflect on those rewards. Mr. Khadaffi, who caused us enormous problems and caused us to have to take military action after he killed American servicemen through terrorist activities in Germany, and I remember the strike on the Gulf of Sidra that was made under Ronald Reagan. He decided, and I think one reason he decided was because of what he saw on his television set, he decided to start turning his nuclear program over to the United States and turning over tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment, and I think that is because he looked at his television set and he saw Saddam Hussein being led out of his spider hole and decided that he did not want to be in that position some day, and so we are now disarming Libya of its nuclear program without firing a shot. That is one result, one reward of having a President who has gone aggressively after the bad guys, and I think Americans understand. I thought what a great thing as I drove up from the gentleman from Virginia's (Mr. Schrock) district the other day, through the gentleman's district and through the gentlewoman from Virginia's (Mrs. Jo Ann Davis) district, what a wonderful thing that we, millions of Americans, live this great life, springtime in America, and you can drive up that highway, you can see the new rose buds coming out and the dogwoods blossoming, and we live this wonderful life with our families in security because we have great people in uniform who are aggressively going after the bad guys. We found out in 9/11 what happens when we do not aggressively go after the bad guys, when we bomb an empty pharmaceutical plant in response to killings of Americans. So I think the American people kind of understand that, and I think that has been reflected in every poll, and these things never come wrapped, I have discovered, in neat packages. Nothing ever flows smoothly. Lots of mistakes are made in wars. You have lots of problems with your logistics lines. I would like to see our armored situations coming along faster than they are. Even though we now have some 7,000 out of our 12,000 Humvees in theater, are now totally remanufactured Humvees or they are up- armored, I would like to see all 12,000 that the Army has up-armored. I would like to see more gun trucks, more armored five tons, seven tons. This President has aggressively gone after the bad guys, and in those actions and the actions of our great people in uniform we have put the United States in a much better position than we were just a few years ago, and I thank the gentleman for talking about this.

Mr. HUNTER. I think the gentleman understands, too, that there is no substitute in terms of a dramatic picture on the television screen for a burning truck or for an explosion or bullet-riddled vehicle. That, unfortunately, tends to sell more Coca Cola

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her great service on the Committee on Armed Services and her dedication to our people in uniform. What a wonderful, wonderful statement she has made, and especially relating it to the people that wear the uniform, because they are literally America's heart and soul over in that military theater. So I thank the gentlewoman from Virginia very much, and now I would like to yield to the gentlewoman's colleague, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Schrock), who has done a great job on our committee and works very hard and has served our people in uniform, so he has a little background there himself. Let me ask the gentleman what his take is on the situation in Iraq right now. How does my colleague see it?

Mr. HUNTER. I would compare it to some of the TV stations who say we are going to make our 5 o'clock news wall to wall wrecks. We are not going to have a lot of content, but we are going to have wall to wall wrecks, and we will get a certain viewership just from doing that. I think nationally you see the same thing. So they do not see the good things. An electric line being hooked up will put you to sleep, and it is nothing like a burning vehicle. I think that is one of the things that we are fighting against. I am glad the gentleman is here to talk about the accomplishments.

Mr. HUNTER. We are all working together.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to thank the gentleman for his great service in the Committee on Armed Services and his expertise to the markups we have had; also to his commitment to our people in uniform. Let me ask the gentleman his ideas on the morale of our troops. I understand this is a tough and difficult time. What is your take?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Let me ask the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Forbes), who actually arrived first for this special order. I want to thank him for his special efforts and all the great service on the committee, and all the work he does for the people who wear the uniform for the United States. Please tell us about your experience in Iraq.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his very eloquent remarks. I am reminded that we have a lot of folks fighting the war against terrorism in Afghanistan and in other parts of the world. We are equally grateful to them. I thank him for the experience he brings to the committee and his good judgment. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my great colleague, the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bradley) for any remarks he would like to make.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield on that one point, I remember one story in the Post and I believe it was fairly well-documented about a high school class in Baghdad where the high schoolers, several of them wrote anti-Saddam Hussein remarks on the blackboard. They disappeared, and their families discovered after some years they had been hung. So high schoolers were taken out and hung for making anti-Saddam remarks.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I might just ask the gentleman what his basic take was on the GIs that he met with while in Iraq?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for those great statements because he has worn the uniform for a long time himself. The gentleman's feeling is that our people have good morale?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his trip, and I want to thank all the Members who have gone, Republican and Democrat. We have had a great majority of the members of the committee go to Iraq and spend a lot of time with the troops. We really appreciate that. Incidentally, I would ask my colleagues, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Forbes) and the gentlewoman from Virginia (Mrs. Jo Ann Davis), the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Schrock), and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner), I will ask the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner) to talk to us a little bit next. But if anybody needs to leave early, we will make sure that they get a chance to speak before we go on. I want to thank the gentleman for his great work on the Committee on Armed Services. It is a big commitment to go to Iraq and take that big block of time, and it is not easy, not convenient and under the rules and the tough aspects of flying into some of those areas now it is a little bit of an ordeal. I want to thank the gentleman for taking the effort and really caring about our troops. Mr. Speaker, I recognize the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner) for any remarks he would like to make.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, when Americans watched U.S. troops take Baghdad through embedded media, they saw the American GI in his true character. They saw a GI who was compassionate, who was honorable, and who had great courage. In a way they saw also the GIs of Vietnam because in many cases those were the sons and grandsons and granddaughters of people who had fought in Vietnam, people who had the same character, the same honor, the same courage. Yet we have had a person who is running for President, Senator John Kerry, describe those people as having murdered 200,000 people in Vietnam, being stoned on pot 24 hours a day, that is he said 60 to 80 percent of them, and ravaging the country in a Genghis Khan-like fashion. I think Americans have a choice. If you feel that your son or daughter did those acts in Vietnam, if that was a true characteristic of American GI's in Vietnam if you served in Vietnam, if you think your husband conducted himself in that fashion, perhaps you want to vote for John Kerry. If you think that is a wild-eyed, nutty statement that is not an appropriate statement for somebody running for President of the United States, vote against John Kerry.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I reluctantly rise to oppose this measure. I know the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), the author of the resolution, is one of the great advocates, as are many of the Members who have spoken, of our folks who are in civil service who support not only lots of domestic operations but also military operations, and I appreciate his advocacy for these great Americans. And I also appreciate the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), the cosponsor, perhaps a guy that I feel is to some degree the conscience of this body and a great leader of this civil service constituency in his district, and also all the other Members who have spoken on behalf of the resolution. The problem I have with the resolution is this: we have a limited amount of money to operate national defense with this year; and, according to CBO, we are some $30 billion a year behind in modernization. That means new equipment for our forces. That means replacing those 18-year-old helicopters and those 15-year-old fighter aircraft and making up that 8 to $10 billion shortfall in munitions. And we pledged this year, and I pledged, to try to make sure that we shape the defense budget this year in such a way that we try to shift as much as $2 billion into the theater, into the fighting theater where our soldiers and Marines are right now fighting against a very deadly enemy in the theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that means coming up with extra money for force protection; that means armor for vehicles; new sensor capability to be able to see the battlefield, tell where the enemy is at, and work surgically against him; and also munitions, which are in short supply. We need to recharge our munitions stockpiles because we have expended a great many of them. For that reason, I hate to see that, if this action is followed by an appropriations shift that takes money from the operational military, and we have calculated roughly $1 billion would come from the operational military, to move it over to accommodate the pay increases above the President's proposal, that means we take $1 billion away from the accounts that do fund the force protection and the munitions and the extra surveillance and sensor capability that we are trying to direct and focus in the Afghan and Iraq battlefields this year. So for that reason, I reluctantly oppose this very well-intentioned motion. I think we need to focus on the task at hand. The emergency at hand is this shooting war that we are in right now.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Professor Richard Hann of Imperial County. Professor Hann recently retired from Imperial Valley College (IVC) after 35 years of devoted service and teaching. I believe it would be accurate to say that Professor Hann has touched the lives of thousands of students during his tenure. Richard's leadership, enthusiasm for teaching and desire to have students develop and exercise their critical thinking skills as Chairman of the Social Science and Humanities Divisions at IVC will be sorely missed. It is becoming increasingly rare to find educators who exhibit the effort and values Richard instilled into the academic environment at IVC. These were exhibited on a daily basis and earned Professor Hann the respect of his colleagues, students, and college administration. I also want to recognize and thank Professor Hann for the work he has done on behalf of Imperial and San Diego Counties. During a time where the pursuit of knowledge and the commitment to one's community often becomes an afterthought, your continued efforts to preserve the history of Imperial and San Diego Counties will benefit our communities for years to come. For your work in this important area, we are forever indebted and are all grateful. Congratulations again on your retirement Professor Hann, I wish you all the best with your future endeavors.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for his sponsorship of this bill and also the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) for doing so much work on it, but also just to comment that this is not just for the recruiters, that people go to institutions of higher education to avail themselves of thousands of choices for career paths. As we think about the officer corps that is performing right now in theater in Iraq, for example, and we look at the leadership which not only has fought a war and now is working an occupation but is also standing up governments, people who have never talked, who have never voted together, who have never worked things out in a peaceful fashion, bringing them together and standing up governments and introducing the idea of democracy to those who have not entertained it before, that is an exciting occupation. Bringing the prospects for that occupation to be a leader in the Armed Forces of the United States, to be what most American citizens feel are our finest citizens, is a great opportunity. This bill, the Rogers bill, will ensure that those people have that choice. I thank the gentleman for bringing it up.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I thank my chairman and I thank my good friend, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) for this conversation. The gentleman is exactly right. We said, let us take money from lesser priorities because we are in a shooting war. And the Republican majority said this: We must redirect that money into the battlefield for force protection for our troops, for ammunition for our troops, and for surveillance capabilities so that we can see these IEDs and we can see the bad guys when they get close to our troops. So, no, we did not say, let us take that and put that off the operational military and put that into a retirement plan, as good as that might be; we said, we know our retired folks are worried about the troops. We focus that money on theater. I would just say to my friend, that is where we have to focus the extra dollars, on the theater in the shooting war, and let us win it.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming the time to respond to my friend, I would hope also that we would have a good, robust supplemental later in the year, but I would just say to my friend that the moneys that are going to be available at the start of the next fiscal year in the early fall are going to be there. We might not have this supplemental back until February or January or March, and I think a dollar in the hand is more important than a dollar at a later time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman and I appreciate the gentleman's point. Toward that point, we have over the last several years, as the gentleman knows, extended on a bipartisan basis TRICARE for Life, the concurrent receipt program that was put into effect the year before last and then expanded last year. I would simply say this to my friend: We are, according to CBO, this year, in terms of new equipment for our soldiers, $30 billion underfunded. That means helicopters that are 18.6 years old, that means airplanes that are two-thirds of the Navy's airplanes being over 15 years old. That means that, in my estimation, one of the best ways to build morale for troops in the field is to give them good equipment, so if we have money to spare, I would say--and we are also low on ammunition, as the gentleman knows. We have not met all of our ammunition totals that the Nation is directed to meet by the levels that we have set, with all of our smartest people working on this issue. So if we are $30 billion behind in terms of giving our young people new equipment, about $10 billion behind on ammunition, that is where we should put the money first, and I think our retired people would agree with that.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman, and I appreciate the statement that was just made by my good colleague, the distinguished gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton). Let me explain why I do not agree that the Spratt budget is the best budget. It is true that we can take more money out of what I would call the operational military, and that is the side of the military from which ammunition, readiness, present operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are funded; and we can move it over to the nonoperational military and give more benefits on that side. The problem with that is that that amounts to a reduction in the operational military. We have a top line, and that top line is not expanded by the Spratt budget, and that means that the people who are retired, who have great affection for this country and have every right to be treated well by this Nation, also have another interest, and that interest is to see that the people who are in the arena today, in the battlefield today, get every single thing that they can possibly have focused on that battlefield and have those resources focused on that battlefield. If we take dollars from the operational military from which the theaters are being fought today and move it over to programs that are well-meaning, good programs, but nonetheless programs that are not in the operational military, that means that we have less money to work with while we are in a shooting war. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to make one second point, though, and that is that we had a good colloquy yesterday, and I thank the gentleman for his concern about housing and about the privatization measures that have been fathered by the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) and the fact that this cap and the present treatment of those dollars could possibly hinder that construction, continued construction of privatized housing. I would just say we had a good colloquy with the chairman of the Committee on the Budget and we are taking care of that one. So I want to thank the gentleman for his interest and for his work on this. We are going to take care of that problem.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman.