Joseph Hoeffel

Mr. HOEFFEL

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, we are here this evening to talk about Iraq, to talk about the military activity, to talk about the weapons of mass destruction, to talk about the postconflict steps that have been taken and need to be taken. I am joined this evening by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), and perhaps others, to talk for the next hour about our national policies in Iraq. Some of us, myself included, voted in favor of the military authority requested by the President to invade Iraq. Some of us who will be speaking tonight voted against that military authority. But all of us have some common questions. We all salute the brave and courageous efforts by our young men and women in uniform. They won a very impressive military victory in short order. That military victory was never in doubt, but it was impressive nonetheless how well our troops performed. But there are two questions, really: Is our military mission completed in Iraq? And secondly, are we winning the peace? Now, I would suggest, just to get the conversation started this evening, that first off, our military mission is not complete, because we have not found the weapons of mass destruction. Those weapons are what motivated me to vote in favor of this military authority, because I believed then and I believe now that it was necessary to disarm Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction. But if we cannot find those weapons of mass destruction, there are serious questions. And we need a full accounting, first, of where those weapons are so that we know they are secured or dismantled and in safe custody. Secondly, we need a full accounting of how accurate our intelligence was. Were our intelligence agencies accurate in the information they gave to the administration? Was that information properly used by the administration? And this is not just an academic exercise. The entire Bush doctrine of the preemptive use of force requires as a foundation accurate intelligence regarding the intentions of other countries and potential enemies around the world. If we are going to use force preemptively in the face of imminent threats to this country or to our allies, we have to know that our intelligence is accurate.

Mr. HOEFFEL. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. HOEFFEL. Given the extraordinary examples that the gentleman has just cited of American generosity to help reconstruct Iraq, does the gentleman think that we are winning the peace in Iraq?

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, if I can follow up on the comments of the gentleman, I certainly agree with him that we need to internationalize the postconflict situation in Iraq. We are bringing on ourselves the frustrations of those people. We do not have anyone sharing the burden other than the British. We do not have anyone else sharing responsibility or blame for things that are going wrong. We need to bring in NATO to help with peacekeeping. We need to bring in the United Nations to help with reconstruction. And, obviously, the United States would be the major partner in both of those operations. We still would be very deeply involved, but we would have international allies and international institutions to help with resources and to help with credibility and to help with responsibility for the work that needs to be done. We need to turn over to the Iraqis as quickly as possible two things: One, their oil; and, secondly, their government. We need to make sure that the Iraqi oil industry is transparent, corruption-free, and the proceeds from which are used to rebuild Iraq. And we have to turn over to the Iraqis their own government. We are moving way too slowly to do that. Paul Bremer, the viceroy occupier, I am not sure what his title is, has postponed repeatedly the formation of an Iraqi interim government. He is now calling it an advisory committee that he will appoint to advise him. I do not think that is the way to give the Iraqis the stake in their future government that they expect and deserve.

Mr. HOEFFEL. Before the gentleman leaves, let me ask him if he has been able to figure out what strategy the President was pursuing last week when he suggested, in the face of the guerilla attacks and ambushes and assassinations of American soldiers, that our opponents should ``bring 'em on?'' Could any of the gentlemen joining me on the floor today tell me what they think the President's strategy was with that comment?

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments. I think we need to learn our lessons and learn them well and ask the questions that need to be asked and avoid the taunts and the arrogance that can get us into a lot of trouble when we fail to think things through. I would like to point out to my colleagues that editorial opinion is focusing on the President's comments and on the post-conflict realities in Iraq. The Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday in response to the President's comments about ``bring it on'' in their lead editorial title ``Bring Reality On,'' said continued hubris in high places heightens risks for U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The Inquirer asks: ``Mr. President, do you live in a playhouse or the White House? Childish taunts such as that are not the calibrated words demanded of the United States President at this turn of history's wheel.'' And the Philadelphia Inquirer goes on to make several points about the reality that is needed in our policy. First, they say get real about the number of U.S. troops needed to establish and maintain order for months to come; get real about the full scope of reconstructing Iraq, its costs and duration; get real about cutting taxes. The incumbent is the only President, the Inquirer says, in the Nation's history to cut taxes in the middle of a hot war. They say get real about spurning the value of the United Nations; get real about the democratic aspirations you unwisely inflated among the long-oppressed, divided Iraqi population; and get real about admitting mistakes.

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I am sure the gentleman is aware that there is a perfectly rational reason why the White House admitted this week that they made a mistake with the President's State of the Union speech in which he claimed Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa. The reason that the White House had to finally admit their error is they were basing this on British intelligence, and the British system has resulted in an open inquiry where British parliamentarians have investigated and continue to investigate the question of the accuracy of their intelligence prewar, and the uses of that intelligence by the Blair administration. They have concluded that while Prime Minister Blair did not himself mislead the public, that this information regarding the purchase of uranium in Africa was simply wrong and was based on forged documents. This White House could no longer maintain the fiction that there was any basis in anybody's intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium in Africa, and they simply had to because of a more open system in England where their Parliament has been more aggressive than this Congress. They had to face reality.

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments, and I actually wrote those words down. ``The hammer of truth will be brought down on the anvil of inquiry,'' and that is our job. It is our challenge here. It is not unpatriotic to ask questions. It is not unpatriotic to seek accountability. It is not unpatriotic to dissent. In fact, it is the highest form of patriotism to seek the truth, to ask questions, to try to get to the bottom of this in the name of the American people. I know our time is short. Mr. Speaker, does either gentleman have any concluding remarks? The gentleman from Hawaii I thank for being here. The gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments, and I would only add it would also be nice if we could be joined by our friends across the aisle in some of these discussions during these special orders. I thank my colleagues for being part of this discussion.

Mr. HOEFFEL

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. HOEFFEL

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I am pleased to rise in support of this resolution today, awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to a great leader of a great country who is and has been a great ally of ours. But it is true that Prime Minister Blair, as President Bush, both have a credibility problem regarding weapons of mass destruction. And it is interesting to see how England is dealing with this problem. They are dealing with it forthrightly, openly. The Parliament has held hearings. Two members of the British Cabinet who resigned in protest have testified. The Prime Minister has subjected himself to questions and they are dealing with this, I believe from a far, it seems to be a very open process, a very forthright process; and the public in England will get the information they need to make a judgment about whether their intelligence was on the mark, whether the intelligence was given to their leaders based upon what they thought the leaders might want to hear. Was the intelligence misused by the British leadership? Was it inaccurate? And I think they have dealt with it very forthrightly. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, that is not happening in this country. We are not seeing the administration stepping forward to deal with the growing credibility gap that has arisen because we cannot find the weapons of mass destruction. We know that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and he used them in the past against his own people in a very murderous way, no question about it; but we cannot find them now. We may find them next week, and I hope we do because our credibility is on the line; but we need a full accounting of how we have dealt with this issue. We need to know where those weapons are. We need to maintain safe custody of them. We need to dismantle them. If they are buried in the desert or given to another country, we need to know what is going on and make sure that they cannot be used by anybody else in the future that has evil intent. But we also need a full accounting of our intelligence operation. What were our leaders told? I know what I was told, Mr. Speaker. I was told publicly and privately by the leading senior advisors to the President, with great certainty I was told that Saddam Hussein last fall had weapons of mass destruction, at the very time it turns out that the Defense Intelligence Agency was circulating a memo that there was no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein then had weapons of mass destruction. That is not the public comments nor the private assurances that Members of Congress or the American public were being given at the time of the President's Rose Garden speech September 26, 2002, and several other statements made. Was the President told what the intelligence agencies thought he wanted to hear? Did the President demand just one side of the story? We need an accounting of what has happened. Our credibility is at stake. If we are ever again to embrace the notion of preemptive use of military force which may be necessary in an age of terror when we are dealing with an adversary who does not have a country to defend or a capital city to defend, if we are ever going to use a preemptive strategy again, we must know our intelligence is accurate; otherwise, the doctrine of preemption is unusable. If we are going to keep this country safe, we have to know what happened. We have to know how well or how poorly our intelligence operation functioned. We need an accounting. We are not getting it from the international relations committee, which last week refused to call for documents. We are not getting it on the floor with the intelligence bill because amendments to have an investigation have been ruled out of order. We have got a document dump at the intelligence committee. I am going to go over and look at those documents, but I do not think that is enough. We need to have an accounting. We need to know what happened.

Mr. HOEFFEL

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, there are two things wrong with the Republican prescription drug bill. Perhaps more than just two but two I wanted to talk about this evening. The first is this bill would privatize the program. It would privatize the prescription drug benefit and it would privatize Medicare itself. The second thing wrong with the Republican prescription drug bill is that it would actually forbid, prohibit, any negotiation by the government with pharmaceutical companies to bring down the cost of the drugs. Now, let me address the first question. Privatization of this proposed drug benefit is a very bad thing. It would, instead of establishing a drug benefit in Medicare, a guaranteed benefit set by the government, responsible to the Congress as all of the rest of Medicare has been situated and constituted for the past 40 some years, the Republican plan would set up a prescription drug plan through private insurance companies and HMOs. Now, those companies have a pretty bad track record in terms of delivering the same product year after year at the same price. In fact, they do not. And in the Medicare+Choice program, at least in the Philadelphia area that I represent, the private HMOs have been increasing the costs of Medicare+Choice, taking away the benefit, making a program that they offered a very elaborate benefit at a relatively low cost and taking away those benefits and increasing the costs. The same thing would happen if we set up a prescription drug program through a privatized insurance based system. The second thing wrong with this privatization is after 10 years they will privatize Medicare itself through this voucher concept that would have vouchers made available in a particular area based upon all of the bidding done by private companies and HMOs as well as Medicare. And that balanced figure, that blended figure would be the voucher provided for an individual to purchase Medicare. And what would happen is the companies would undercut Medicare, they would attract younger seniors and healthier seniors, they would be allowed, therefore, to save money because they would not be paying as many bills, and each year in each cycle of bidding those private companies would be able to drop their premiums lower than what Medicare would have to charge. Medicare would be stuck with older seniors and sicker seniors and it would be the end of Medicare as we know it. That is what this is going to be achieved if we allow the privatization of Medicare in this bill. The second major problem is the prohibition on negotiating with the drug companies for lower prices. I do not get it. I do not understand it. What is the point of setting up a Medicare based prescription drug plan if we do not use the Federal Government's bargaining power to negotiate with the large pharmaceutical companies for a lower price? That is the whole point. That is why other countries that have large bargaining units negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies have much lower prices than we do. The Committee on Government Reform under the ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), just did a study in my district. The seniors in the 13th Congressional District of Pennsylvania benefit paid twice as much for their drugs as seniors pay for the very same drugs on average in Canada, England, France, Germany and Italy, twice as much because those countries have a combination of bargaining power that they use to negotiate with the drug companies for lower prices. This Republican bill prohibits such negotiation by the Secretary of HHS with the drug companies. That is nonsensical and that alone is a good reason to vote no. Those are two reasons. There are many more. We should defeat this bill. Pass the substitute proposed by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) and give seniors a real prescription drug program.

Mr. HOEFFEL

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Abington Senior High School as the recipient of the 2003 Harris Wofford Award presented by Youth Service America and the State Farm Companies Foundation. The Harris Wofford Award, named for former US Senator Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania, was established in 2002 for the first annual State Farm Awards Luncheon as part of the 13th Annual National Service- Learning Conference. This award honors Harris Wofford's life long ``mission of making service to others the common expectation and common experience of every young person in America''. An award like this is long overdue for Abington Senior High School since they have been dedicated to community service for years. The service-learning program, which started in 1995, has encouraged the student body to take an active interest in helping the community. The positive impact this program has had on the community as well as the students is immeasurable. The 60,000 hours that students spent last year helping the community is an outstanding accomplishment. As a proud parent of two Abington Senior High School alumni, I am sincerely honored to be able to recognize the students of Abington for their dedication and commitment to helping others. Programs like these not only help the community but also teach our youth the power of working together and helping others.

Mr. HOEFFEL

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the House with a number of my colleagues who will be joining me later, notably the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) and the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie), to talk about Iraq. Mr. Speaker, we have had a great military victory in Iraq. Our young men and women performed with great courage and great effectiveness. We are all very proud of our military and the fact that the threat of the Saddam Hussein regime is no longer present to threaten regional and world peace. But we have two questions that we believe need to be addressed: First, is our military mission complete in Iraq? Secondly, having won the military victory, are we winning the peace? Regarding the military mission, I would suggest to the House that our mission is not complete without a full accounting of the weapons of mass destruction. There is no question that the primary purpose for invading Iraq put forward by the administration last year and accepted by a majority of the Members of Congress, myself included, was for the purpose of disarming Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction. There is no question that Hussein had such weapons in the past. The international United Nations inspectors were finding them in the mid and late 1990s. Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, notably chemical weapons, against his own citizens with devastating and brutal effects. No one has dreamt up or made up the motion that Hussein had in the past weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he did. But we cannot find them now. We do not know where they are. Perhaps they are buried in the desert and we will find them next week. I hope that is the case. Perhaps he gave them to some other group or some other country. Perhaps he destroyed them. We do not know what happened, but many of us in the House believe that we must have a full accounting of what happened to the weapons of mass destruction before our military mission is complete, for two basic reasons. First off, we need to know where they are. If they are not in Iraq and have been given or taken someplace else, we need to secure them, to dismantle them. We need to know who has the custody of them. If they are in Iraq, we have to find them. We have to make sure that the coalition forces gain custody of those weapons of mass destruction and not another group that might use them for evil purposes. If these weapons have been destroyed, all for the better; but we need to know why our intelligence did not know that fact. We frankly need to know what happened to them so that we could be sure that the world has been rid of that particular group of weapons of mass destruction and that, if they do exist, they are in safe custody. The second reason that we need a full accounting of the weapons of mass destruction is to determine what has happened regarding our intelligence and the political use of that intelligence by the Bush administration in the arguments to support war in Iraq. There is no question that the Bush administration and the leading senior advisors to the President stated with complete certainty in the fall of 2002 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was developing more weapons of mass destruction, and posed an imminent threat to the region and, in fact, to the world. In private briefings and in public statements, the President of the United States and his senior advisors assured Members of Congress and the American people that the weapons of mass destruction existed, that they were being developed in even greater numbers, and that they posed an imminent threat. And many of us, myself included, based our vote in favor of military action against Iraq for the primary purpose of disarming Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction. Now we cannot find them. More troubling, now stories are appearing in the press and intelligence analysts are stepping forward, only on the record if they have retired, off the record if they still are at work for the United States, saying, in fact, they were not giving such certain advice to the White House in the fall of 2002, that they were saying we cannot be sure what kinds of weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein had in the fall of 2002. On September 26, 2002, the President made a speech in the Rose Garden stating with great certainty that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction and was developing additional chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, and yet at the same time it now has become public. The Defense Intelligence Agency in September, 2002, was circulating a report through the White House in the highest levels of the administration saying ``there was no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein currently had weapons of mass destruction or was developing more weapons of mass destruction.'' There was some evidence, but no credible evidence that that was a certainty. And that lack of certainty did not make its way into the public and private arguments made by the administration. So many of us feel that the Bush administration has a growing credibility gap regarding the weapons of mass destruction. Why does this matter? It matters greatly for the President's new doctrine of preemption, of the preemptive use of military power to stop an enemy. I do believe in an age of terror when we are dealing with adversaries that do not always come from another country who do not always have a capital city to defend or a homeland to defend when we are dealing with terrorists who are not only faceless but stateless that it may be necessary to take preemptive military action if we are faced with an imminent threat to this country. But that presupposes that we have accurate intelligence. It is one thing to respond to an attack against us. That is the way America has always gone to war once we have been attacked, and it is easy, of course, in the traditional sense of warfare to see an armada massing in the bay or an army building on our borders to know that an attack is imminent. In an age of terror, we will not always have that warning; so preemptive action may be wise and necessary in the future, but we must have accurate intelligence. We must be able to depend upon that intelligence. We must be able to depend upon the intelligence analysts bringing the information forward in a timely fashion, giving their best advice to the President and the White House, and then we have to depend upon the President and the White House using that information appropriately and wisely, using it to inform Congress and the American people, not to mislead Congress and the American people. We do not know at this point what exactly happened regarding our intelligence. We do not know whether it was misused by anyone intentionally or unintentionally. We do not know whether the White House heard what it wanted to hear in these intelligence briefings. We do not know whether the intelligence briefings told the White House what the briefers thought the White House wanted to hear, nor do we know whether Congress was told what people only wanted us to know or perhaps what they thought they wanted us to know. But these questions have to be answered because it goes to the very root of our democratic system, our checks and balances, the proper relationship between the executive and the legislative branches and whether or not we can have faith in the accuracy of our national intelligence agencies and in the proper use of that intelligence. Before I go any further, we have been joined by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), a senior member of the House Committee on International Relations and an eloquent spokesman on foreign policy and national security, my good friend; and I yield to him.

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) has framed the issue very well. There are many things we need to be talking about regarding the post-conflict situation in Iraq: how to secure it properly because security is a huge issue; and how to bring not just democracy to the people of Iraq but the institutions of democracy, free press, free speech, a noncorrupt judicial system. The gentleman talks about the need for a full disclosure by the President of the costs of the commitment, the challenges and the time line that we face in Iraq. As we close tonight, I cannot think of a better request we can make of the President, to tell the American people and the Congress what we will be facing in Iraq. If the people do not know, they will not support it. And if times get tough, and they have been, 17 people have died in Iraq since hostilities have supposedly ended.

Mr. HOEFFEL. It is staggering. We need a full description and a full setting-forth of the challenge by the President. I thank the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, is the gentleman aware that according to reports, the CIA informed the White House of the lack of accuracy of these reports in March of 2002, a full 10 months before the President's State of the Union Address this past January?

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, let me ask the gentleman a question along this line of the growing credibility gap. I am sure the gentleman has heard about the two supposedly mobile labs that have been found in Iraq after the conflict. I wonder if the gentleman saw the news today about what appears to have been their actual use.

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, the latest is that reports are now circulating that instead of being used for biological or chemical laboratories, these two trucks were used to make hydrogen for the purpose of filling up the Iraqi weather balloons needed by Iraqi artillery and used by all artilleries to gauge wind and currents and so forth to make their artillery shooting accurate. It appears that the loose canvas covering on these trucks would not be conducive to their use as chemical or biological laboratories and that the equipment there is probably designed for hydrogen production.

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I have been here just 5 years. I have often heard of the gentleman's eloquence and passion, and he has proven it tonight with great glory.

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments and particularly for his suggestion. I think it is a very good one. There is no doubt that we need an independent and nonpolitical review of the performance of our intelligence agencies and the use to which that intelligence was put. And I think an independent commission such as the gentleman describes is an excellent idea and one that I would certainly support. We have been joined by our colleague, the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie), who was a passionate advocate on matters of national security and foreign policy; and I am happy to yield such time to the gentleman from Hawaii.

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, his comments about Vietnam, I think, are very telling and warrant some consideration. One of my great concerns before the military involvement in Iraq started was not whether we would win that military confrontation. That was never in doubt. But how we would act afterwards and would we be perceived in perception or reality as a colonial power, an occupying power, or one that was there to liberate and help Iraqis gain control of their own lives. Now, I have noticed that the United States asked the United Nations to name us and the British occupying powers, using that phrase in the U.N. resolution of a week or two ago, occupying powers, which seems to me to be sending the wrong signal to the rest of the world about what our role in Iraq should be. And the gentleman's comments about Vietnam, what I most recall about our quagmire in Vietnam was how poorly our Presidents explained the Vietnam policy to the American people.

Mr. HOEFFEL. Absolutely right. And the great failing I see now is the inability of the current President to explain the costs, the challenges, and the time lines facing us as occupying powers, if you will, in Iraq. The gentleman was there. I would be fascinated to hear his response based upon his firsthand observation.

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I would yield to my colleague from Massachusetts.

Mr. HOEFFEL

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.