Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin) for his great service to the Committee on Armed Services. I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Schrock), another gentleman with great military expertise.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Isakson).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kline), a gentleman with great experience in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews) for his great work on the committee. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest), who was a distinguished Marine rifleman in Vietnam.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce). (Mr. PEARCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Mrs. Musgrave), who has a son in the United States Navy.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you for allowing a vote on H.R. 417, necessary to right a past error by the Department of Interior in designating the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge. Mr. Frank Dokter, a former constituent whose family business depends on the outcome of this legislation, testified before this panel last year on a similar bill. Although it passed the House, the Senate unfortunately could not act before the end of the 107th Congress. Mr. Dokter and his family operate Walter's Camp, a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) concession on land near the lower Colorado River in Imperial County, California, near and within the Cibola Refuge. The facility provides visitors with a family-friendly outdoors experience, which includes camping, hiking, canoeing, fishing, birdwatching and rock-hounding. In an increasingly crowded Southern California, Mr. Dokter and his family have provided a welcome diversion from city life to many of the region's outdoors enthusiasts. Walter's Camp was first authorized in 1962, and in August 1964, Public Land Order 3442 withdrew 16,627 acres along the Colorado River to create the Refuge. The withdrawal erroneously included the 140.32 acre Walter's Camp, but neither the BLM or the Fish and Wildlife Service immediately recognized the mistake. The BLM continued to renew the original permit, allowing the recreational concession use to continue unbroken until the present time. However, given the discovery of the past mistake, the BLM does not have the authority to continue issuing the concession contracts to Walter's Camp. The Fish and Wildlife Service and the BLM agree that the land has ``insignificant, if any, existing . . . or potential . . . wildlife habitat value,'' as stated in a Department of Interior memo. Therefor, I have introduced H.R. 417 to correct this mistake and allow the BLM to continue to issue contracts to Walter's Camp. Mr. Speaker, I offer my sincere recommendation that this land to taken out of the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, and that Mr. Dokter's family be allowed to continue such a valuable and productive service to our region. Respectfully, I urge my colleagues' support on final passage.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time, and I just wanted to say, Mr. Speaker, first, I wanted to give my thanks to the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), the chairman of the Committee on Resources, for his leadership and for understanding how important this bill that deals with a fairly small parcel of land, how important this is to working folks in southern California who need a place to get away from the boss and be with the family and enjoy rock hounding and fishing and canoeing and all the neat things one does on the Colorado River. The chairman, in his usual, very plain-spoken and straightforward style, has explained this very well. This is 140 acres of land, known as Walters Camp, and that is probably named after a gentleman who was a gold miner on the Colorado River at one time. It was a concession that was operated for average folks who could come in and have a great time and rock hound and canoe and fish. Unfortunately, in the land withdrawal for the Cibola Refuge in 1964, it was mistakenly added into the withdrawal. Fish and Wildlife have testified on several occasions that it does not have a significant value in terms of wildlife, and so they have no problem with righting this wrong and correcting this mistake. Mr. Speaker, once again, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), who is doing a superb job of chairing this committee and allowing me to move this bill, bringing it forward; and hopefully we can get the other body to act on it and restore a good measure of outdoor enjoyment to working families in Southern California. I thank the chairman, and I hope that we can pass this with an overwhelming vote.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, our troops are well-equipped, well-trained and well-led. They are well-led all the way from their noncommissioned officers and officers at the small unit and company and battalion and brigade and division level all the way up to their leader at the top, the Commander in Chief of America's Armed Forces, President George Bush. They have everything they need for victory except for one ingredient, Mr. Speaker. They need a Congress which quits berating their President, who is their leader, and their mission and closes ranks behind that mission and our President for victory.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman would yield on that point, I agree with the gentleman that the folks who express their dissent and have been expressing their dissent in government, basically giving the other side of the debate, are providing a public service by doing that. But I think there are a few observations that are important here. There have been people demonstrating worldwide in large numbers, hundreds of thousands of people, against the prospect of war with Iraq. I do not think any of those people demonstrated when the Kurdish babies were laid low by the gas attacks with poison gas that Saddam Hussein spread over their villages. I do not think any of those folks demonstrated when he gassed Iranians by the tens of thousands, or when he executed his own people, cut off their ears and did the myriad of reprehensible acts that have now been ascribed to him, both in closed-door sessions by our intelligence officers and in open sessions by various human rights agencies. So I think it is always important to set the record straight, or to come into these debates with a full understanding of where they come from. And I think one of the most honest talk shows that was ever devised for television was ``Crossfire,'' where the conservative would say ``from the right,'' and the liberal would say ``from the left.'' But it is obvious that the people who are demonstrating by the hundreds of thousands, some of them well-meaning people, also include lots of people who are not necessarily demonstrating because they have a great love of mankind, or that they are special peace people or have a special care about humanity, because, if they did, they would have been demonstrating when Saddam Hussein gassed those Kurdish babies by the hundreds. They were not demonstrating there, so that did not bother them. It did not bother them because it was not destabilizing. I think a lot of folks do not like the idea that war in itself is something unsure, it is destabilizing, that it potentially affects the cost of gasoline in your automobile, it potentially affects your community, it may affect relatives who may have to go off to war. So it is something that brings about a feeling of unsettlement. But let us answer that question the gentleman brought up, why are we entering into this confrontation, it appears? I think one question that could be well thrown back is this: in 1991, when we had not only lots of folks in this country and around the world against us taking action against Iraq when they invaded Kuwait, we not only had lots of folks on the streets around the world, but we also had a majority of the Democrat leadership. I do not fault that Democrat leadership for having taken their position, which they have a political right to do, and taking that side of the debate. But we found afterwards, to answer those people who said give peace some time, give it a chance, give us another 10 months, 18 months, whatever, we found out that according to United Nations estimates, Saddam Hussein at the time that we defeated him in battle was 6 months away from having a nuclear weapon. So certainly those well-meaning folks who thought that time was on our side discovered afterward, and to the surprise of everyone, conservatives, liberals, Democrats, Republicans, none of us knew how close he was to having that system. So time is not always on our side. It is my estimate, after having conducted some closed hearings and some open hearings, eight hearings in total, it is my judgment that this country is going to have a nuclear device in about 3 years, and, along with that capability, possessing that capability, because we have allies who have nuclear devices, Britain has nuclear devices and we are not worried about them, that country has with its present leadership, I think, the intent to use that capability against Americans, either in theater or in the American homeland. Mr. Speaker, when you add up capability plus intent, you have a national interest; and our national interest now is to take that away from him before he has the full capability. So I think that reasonable people can differ on this subject. But the lesson of Desert Storm I was that time is not always on our side.

Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman would yield on that point, the facts that the gentleman is putting out are especially important because those are not guesses on our part. In fact, they are not even guesses on the part of the United Nations or on the part of the arms inspectors. Those come from documents from the Iraqis themselves, from their own declarations and their own documents. So the 6,500 liters of anthrax, for example, which is enough anthrax to kill around 1 million folks, is something that came from their documentation, not ours. That is something that they have not turned over. The thousands of chemical munitions that the gentleman has gone through, that comes from their documentation, not ours. So this is like the storekeeper who says here is my inventory list, and then later on he wants you to expect that somehow, without any outward manifestation or anything that could be picked up or anything that was shown to the rest of the world, all of those weapons have disappeared. Let me just say, and this might be the time to comment on this, the easiest bet in show business is that this tiny little handful of so- called inspectors, and there are less inspectors than there are policemen in the average small town in America, the idea they are somehow going to be able to go through this massive state and discover weapons of mass destruction in these vast empty buildings that the inspectors are being shown by the Iraqi bureaucrats, the idea that that is in some way going to happen is an absolute fantasy. So I predicted early on, before this thing ever started, on the record, that they were not going to find anything of import. These folks have had a long time to bury it. And the Iraqi bureaucrat who actually leads arms inspectors into these places, and 90 percent of them are places where they have been before, time and again, big empty buildings, and lo and behold, there is a weapon of mass destruction that somehow the maid forgot to clean up from the night before, that bureaucrat is going to be considered two things: one, the dumbest bureaucrat in Iraqi history, and, secondly, shortly thereafter, the deadest bureaucrat in Iraqi history. So this is a state that has had an entire agency devoted to hiding things very effectively, and the idea that this little bitty corporal's guard of so-called inspectors is somehow going to find them, is like saying that this massive police force in Washington, DC., and the police force in D.C. is 10 times as big as the inspectors for all of Iraq, it is like saying that the drug lords of Washington, DC. are expected to pile all of their cocaine at an intersection on Pennsylvania Avenue at a given time. When they do not pile it up, and the Washington Post thereby concludes that there is not any cocaine in Washington, DC., you will have the equivalency to what some of the media is doing today with these reports of negative findings with respect to Iraq. Of course, they are not going to turn over this stuff that they have spent millions of dollars hiding to this little bitty force which does not have the ability to go in and which is having absolutely no success in terms of finding it. Remember this great idea where we were going to isolate or bring out for interrogation these people in the Iraqi technical establishment, the scientists, the engineers who build this stuff? Somehow we were going to get them and the families alone outside of the country, and then they were going to tell us things, just like the ones that have come out have told us. Now, that has not happened; and not surprisingly, while these people are under the control of Saddam Hussein, while the Iraqi guard stands there and looks them in the eye, they say, I would rather not talk unless I am accompanied by one of Mr. Hussein's officials. Well, of course they say that. The safety of their lives and the lives of their children depend on them saying that. This country has to act in the security interests of the United States. I recall, with respect to these other countries that have not come on board, that when Menachem Begin hit the Iraqi nuclear reactor site in Osirak in the 1980s, lots of countries in the world publicly deplored the act, and said this was a terrible intrusion on the Iraqi airspace. They then walked quietly into the security of their own offices and they breathed sighs of relief because that capability had been taken way.

Mr. HUNTER. Yes. I think one French engineer was killed that way. There was one engineer working on a Saturday or Sunday at the Iraqi site. As I recall, there was one engineer killed. My point is, the world has two faces; one face in which they, too, are deathly afraid of an emerging nuclear capability on the part of Saddam Hussein, and terrified with the present-day chemical and biological weapons capability. They do not want him to hurt them, they want us to protect them. On the other hand, those people, especially the people that Don Rumsfeld describes as those who live in the neighborhood, who have to deal with them, are going to be very reluctant to publicly say that the bully should be taken on, because the bully is going to remember what they said.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I would just say, and I hope my colleague will excuse me, because I have to go try to do something we have both been working on, and that is talk to some folks from our Committee on the Budget and convince them we need more for defense. But I would say, Mr. Speaker, that I think the gentleman has laid out a very well-documented case for taking action. I notice also that the gentleman is a veteran of the Gulf War. He told me about the apprehension that he and other Americans had when they heard those missiles coming in. This is a very dangerous situation we are in. I think we have to acknowledge it every time we debate this issue. Is this dangerous? Yes, it is dangerous. The policies of doing nothing are also extremely dangerous. This is not going to be the easy century following the disassembly of the Soviet empire that we once thought it was going to be. I think we need to have a broad military capability, the ability to make a surgical strike, to fight guerilla warfare, to take on conventional attack and armored attack, and also the ability to stop a missile attack. We live in an age of missiles, and we have to be able to stop that. In this case, we have to have the ability to preempt and disarm an adversary whose intended goal is to destroy Americans. I know it is a difficult, tough thing to do, and I would just ask the gentleman to comment on this a little in his remarks after I leave. I have been impressed with this President, because if he had wavered slightly through this last process of the last 6 months or so, we would be faltering right now. But he understands his role, which is as President of the United States, and his duty to the security of the United States. That is not a role which is to be subverted by a vote by Cameroon, for example, or some other country whose name Americans have difficulty remembering. It is an American obligation to defend Americans. He is our Commander in Chief. He staged the forces very effectively for this operation. He is willing to account for the success or failure of any military operation. He is a good commander in chief. I think he has done the right things. I think some of the allies falling by the wayside was entirely predictable, because when good old Americans can carry the load, other countries are often willing to let us do that. That is why, when we bring 90 percent of the funding to a military operation that they ask us to do, like Bosnia, we sometimes choke a little bit but we usually do it; and usually they are willing to stand back and let us bear the brunt of those operations, because it is practical for them for their politics and economy. But this President has kept his eye on the ball, which is to disarm Saddam Hussein. I think he is moving this mission forward in a very effective manner. I want to thank the gentleman. I would like him to talk a little bit about Desert Storm. I have to take off, but I would like the gentleman to share with folks about Desert Storm, that the gentleman is a veteran of, and the quality and capability of the folks we have in the Armed Forces.

Mr. HUNTER. I think the gentleman has given an excellent representation of what this dictator does, Mr. Speaker, and what he stands for. I think that builds an excellent context in which we can try to evaluate whether or not peace would work, given a chance. First, he is deceptive. Secondly, I think he believes his future depends on manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. Third, he is willing to take his own people through enormous discomfort and inconvenience and danger in order to achieve his own political ends. But I would say to the gentleman that there are pieces of Saddam Hussein's activities, although maybe not the composite, but it can be fairly said, and it has been said by lots of people, are there not other dictators in the world who do the same thing, and we are not attacking them? I would say that that is true. I would say the reason that I think we should move forward, and I think is the major justification for this massive operation, is American security. This guy is the leader who has used ballistic missiles against American troops and killed them with it. He has used poison gas against his own people in recent times. He has exhibited a willingness to kill Americans. As a result of the background that I have seen and the facts that I have seen, it is my conclusion that if he can achieve the production of a nuclear device, that at some point he will use it on our troops in theater or on Americans. I think it is a wise decision to keep him from being able to do that. That takes us to, I think, what I think is a very important point for policy debate. It has been a point for policy debate. We now have what I call the Pearl Harbor school emerging from the other side of this debate. Those are the people who say, by golly, we are America. We wait for our Pearl Harbors before we respond. When the enemy inflicts a heavy blow on us, that is when we rally; that is when we talk about the day of infamy; and that is when we go out and strike back and overwhelm the enemy, and justice prevails. The problem with the Pearl Harbor school is that these weapons are so severe today and so dangerous and so destructive that we cannot afford to wait to have a Pearl Harbor occur before we eliminate the source. To some degree, we are carrying that out right now. September 11 killed a lot of Americans; but, arguably, the new tightening of our borders, the new security efforts we have undertaken in the American homeland should prevent some of those things from being able to happen again. Therefore, it could be argued that there is no reason for us to be in Afghanistan going after people and disrupting terrorist groups; in fact, in some cases taking on people who personally were not involved in the event of 1995. But what we have discovered is that we do have to do some preemption. I think this question is going to be facing us again and again in this century: Are we going to stand by and watch somebody who has demonstrated an intent to kill Americans develop high technology with which he can kill lots of Americans, and stand by and wait for him to gain that weapon and use it on us before we respond; or are we going to try to eliminate that danger before the Pearl Harbor occurs? That is a tough thing, because Americans do not like to be the first ones to strike out. When we watch the speech of FDR after Pearl Harbor, there was no dissent in the House Chamber. That was an easy vote, that vote for war. We were all together, we had that common ground, and had that feeling that we were in the right. As Joe Lewis said, we felt that God was on our side. Now we are faced with these terrible weapons, and we cannot afford to take the blow that will come from those systems. In a way, we are a little bit like little tiny postage stamp Israel that stood there and watched this nuclear reactor being built in Iraq. They had seen the speeches by Saddam Hussein where he made thinly veiled threats to the effect that the final recipient of the output of those nuclear reactor plants would be weapons detonating in Israel. Israel realized they were too small, too flimsy, too frail to take that massive blow, so they went out and destroyed that plant. Unfortunately, one person was killed. He was an engineer from France who was working there over the weekend. But because of that, they saved thousands of people from being killed. So whether we embark on this policy of preemption or not is a valid subject for a major policy debate, but I think, in many cases, the answer must be yes; and certainly in this case this person is a person who has already killed Americans with ballistic missiles as well as with conventional capability, and has tried to acquire these other capabilities. Because of that, I think we see the intent, and when the intent is married up with the ability to do it, we are going to rue the day that we, for convenience' sake and for stability's sake and for safety's sake, we gave up an opportunity to disarm him when we had the opportunity.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) who is a veteran of the Gulf War and presently a U.S. Naval reservist.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, in Vietnam, guys on the ground used to refer to the jets overhead as fast movers, and today we always wondered about the comfortable life that they lead. So I was talking to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) and the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons) about that very thing recently. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons) who piloted fast movers, that is, fighter aircraft in both Vietnam and the Gulf War, and who is a veteran of those two conflicts and a great leader in the Committee on Armed Services, and also a guy who represents Nellis Air Force Base and Also the Fallon Naval Air Station. (Mr. GIBBONS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to, say, to the gentleman who just spoke, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Ortiz), that I remember the time when he and I and other members of the committee went down to Honduras when the 82nd Airborne jumped into Honduras to stiffen the spine of the Honduran government, which had seen an invasion of the Sandinistas along their border. I will never forget, in a national press conference, with lots of cameras, when the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Ortiz) was asked the question, ``Don't you feel any sympathy with the Sandinistas, based on your ethnicity?'' The gentleman told them very simply that he was an American. And I remember him being in many, many inconvenient and difficult places to ensure that our troops were in good shape. And let me also say, before I yield to the next speaker, and I know my great friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Ortiz) would agree with this strongly, that we are all very grateful to the employers. Part of this resolution is an expression of ``thank you'' and gratitude to all the employers in America, whether they are a six-man machine shop or a large corporation, with the accommodations that they give, that America's employers are giving to our reservists, to these citizen soldiers who drop that tool that they are using or get out from behind the wheel of that truck and put on the uniform of the United States and go off, in some cases, for an extended period of time to defend this Nation. I can just tell my colleagues that there are lots and lots of examples of companies and small businesses which have bent over backwards to take care of those folks and make sure that that job is preserved for them, and going far beyond what is called for by the law and mandated by the law. So I just want to let them know that we really appreciate what they are doing. And I know the gentleman from Texas would agree with that, because there are lots of great employers in south Texas who have done the same thing. Are there not?

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

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. This is the picture of General Bob Cardenas in 1949 flying the flying Wing right over this Capitol. I thank the gentleman for letting me be part of this Special Order tonight.

Mr. HUNTER. We are going to have calls on that. There is another guy I want to mention and that is Duke Cunningham because you have come to this body with lots of stature that you won on the battlefield, and you went through a lot of the same feelings that a lot of those guys are feeling right now getting ready for action in what could be a very difficult theater. Mr. Speaker, my colleague is a man who was heavily decorated with the Navy Cross and the Purple Heart and lots of Flying Crosses, and we appreciate the gentleman's great service to the country. Having the gentleman here to bring the common sense and practicality of operating aircraft to this body, which often just sees aircraft and services in terms of numbers and reflections on pages, has been a great service to our Congress. My colleague is the last hero that I want to point to today, but not least.

Mr. HUNTER. No, but I think you are going to tell me.

Mr. HUNTER. That reminds me of something that President Reagan said, and I am thinking of all those troops wearing the Desert Storm camouflage in the Middle East, you can go to France, you can never become a Frenchman. You can go to Germany, and you can never become a German. You can go to Mexico, and you can never become a Mexican. But you come to the United States, and you become an American. All of us are united behind the American flag, and it has been the greatest mixer of people and the greatest set of common values and common ground that free people could rally around in the history of the world. I think it is appropriate that you brought this story to us tonight because that is the story of our country. I think that there is no greater force to bring people together in this country than the U.S. military. It brings people together, whether they have titles behind their names or have gone to universities of renown or have lots of money or no money. It brings them all together for a common cause, and it provides a line of communication and touching and rapport with their colleague standing next to them, who may have come from the other side of the country. I want to mention two other people, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sam Johnson), our great friend whom we honored the other day with a resolution. As a POW he was an Air Force guy who did a great job, and he is such a leader in Congress today.

Mr. HUNTER. The French aircraft were unusual. Most of them were parked. We will talk about that later. Billy Mitchell gave an extraordinary warning to this country. He was not received well at the White House. There were a lot of budget hawks that did not want to spend a bunch of money on military equipment. After all, the 1930s were supposed to be a very peaceful time. So they gave him short-shrift, and he became more and more insistent in his demands that the United States gear up for what he saw as a coming storm. He made statements to the effect that we were unprepared for war, so they court martialed him. In the movie Gary Cooper played Billy Mitchell. He sacrificed his own career to wake America up. I have often thought about if Billy Mitchell came back and told us we were entering the age of air power and we had better become proficient at it or we would be in dire straits. Similarly, we have now entered the age of missiles, and now that we have seen North Korea shooting the TD-2 missile with the capability of reaching the west coast of the United States, when we look at their unstable leadership, I am reminded of the fact that we are deep in the age of missiles, and we need to be awakened, just as America needed to be awakened by Billy Mitchell in the 1920s and 1930s that we were in the age of air power; and we need to be awakened that we are deeply in the age of missiles, and we better have the ability to shoot down missiles. Billy Mitchell had this extraordinary career in which he not only shot down enemy aircraft and was a leader in aviation, but he also spoke out. I think that is another trademark of these great aviators that we have talked about. Joe Foss spoke out. Bob Cardenas is still speaking out. Chuck Yeager spoke out very strongly and forcefully. And Billy Mitchell was also a guy that really spoke out.