Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on what Republican Senator Chuck Hagel said, because I think it is accurate. He said, discussing the situation in Iraq, ``It is beyond pitiful. It is beyond embarrassing. It is now in the zone of dangerous.'' And I want to reiterate that that is not just rhetoric; that is reality. The reason I know it is reality is because we just lost a man from Lynwood, Washington, last week, Corporal Steven Rintamaki, 21 years of age, who will never be coming home, killed in action in Iraq while serving proudly and with distinction in Iraq. Yes, indeed, this is in the zone of dangerous. And this country deserves an administration who will be forthright and truthful and is not looking through this situation with rose-colored glasses. What Chuck Hagel said, that we are now in the zone of dangerous, I think we can say in spades that that is the situation. I learned something tonight, Mr. Speaker, that is so disturbing I just have to share it. Osama bin Laden, who is still at large somewhere in the world tonight, after the President told us he would get him dead or alive; he is still at large. The al Qaeda network is still functioning and now attacking our troops in Iraq. And we have been very concerned for some time that this administration, in its action in Iraq, has taken its eye off the ball of destroying the al Qaeda network and diverted resources and attention into Iraq, thereby increasing the risk that al Qaeda would remain a threat. And, indeed, Osama bin Laden is alive tonight and is a threat. I learned something tonight. We knew about the administration moving resources from Afghanistan that could be used in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The Predator aircraft, the drone that moves around, they moved that to Iraq before we got done looking for Osama bin Laden. We know that the administration has more people checking on people going to Cuba as tourists than they do trying to interdict monies going to al Qaeda. We know about those diversions in this prioritization. But let me tell you about one I learned about tonight. NBC news today reported that the administration three times had the opportunity to take out terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi who, right now, could be associated with some of the beheadings we have seen, actually, his network. Three times the President quashed efforts to take out Zarqawi before the war in Iraq started because they did not want to diminish or undercut their argument of why they needed to go to Iraq.

Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman from Massachusetts will continue to yield.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. INSLEE. It seems to me we are at a Y in the road; and as Yogi Berra said, when you are at a Y in the road, take it. But this administration is refusing to recognize the need for a change in policy in Iraq. Their message to the American people is more of the same. Same old, same old. We are doing just fine. It is hunky-dory in Iraq. So let us keep doing what we have done here for the last year and a half. I want to suggest there are four things that need a major change in our Iraq policy or we will face certain failure and more deaths, as my constituent did last week. Four things: number one, we have got to have a meaningful, timely training program to train the Iraqi forces so that they can take responsibility for their own country, which is the only way this is going to be successful. What do we find this administration has done in regard to retraining the Iraqi Army? We are now a year and a half after the invasion of Iraq, a time period where we knew, if somebody was thinking about it, that we were going to have massive retraining needs to train about 250,000 troops. That was going to take some work to do that. One would think people would figure that out. But it is a year and a half after the invasion of Iraq, and this administration still has less than 40 percent of even the people responsible for training the Iraqis working for us to get this job done. We only have half the capability, according to an article of September 20; 230 of the 600 we knew were going to be necessary are on the job. This administration has dropped the ball on a fundamental thing that is required for success in Iraq, which is to train their security forces. And why did they do this? I know why they did it. Because they told us we were going to be greeted with open arms, rose petals, and the Iraqi equivalent of champagne. Why would we have to train all these soldiers and police officers? It was going to be a cake walk.

Mr. INSLEE. And we would not have to pay for it either, Mr. Speaker. So here we are a year and a half after the invasion, this administration still has less than half the infrastructure we need to get this job done. So that is number one that needs a significant change in policy. Second, we need an administration who will say we have got to have elections sooner rather than later. When we had a brief window where we were not getting bombed and RPG'd for about 3 months early in this campaign, we had a chance for elections. But the President sent Mr. Bremer over there, and he put the kibosh on elections. Sistani wanted elections. They would not allow them. And here we are in this pickle. And this is why this is important. They are telling us, Mr. Allawi is going to tell us tomorrow, that we are going to have great elections on January 31 in Iraq. That is great except for one problem: there are huge swaths of Iraq today, in late September, that are not under the control of the Iraqi government. Fallujah, Ramadi. We heard about a battle a couple of miles south of Baghdad yesterday. How are they going to have elections to get this job done? They are not prepared to get it done, and the only way we are going to do this is to only have about 50 percent of the country voting.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would further yield, those large swaths are called no-go zones. And that means that nobody from the Iraqi government or we go to. What is happening tonight with those no-go zones? The Iraqi insurgents are planning to kill Marines and building up their capability of doing it, and we are not going after them. I am concerned, I am concerned, that one of the reasons we have adopted these no-go zones is because this administration wants no casualties, which none of us want ever, but he particularly may not want them before November 2. We never want casualties ever, but to allow these insurgents to build their forces which they are later going to throw back in our faces and shoot at our Marines and soldiers is most troublesome. There is a third thing that needs to change, and I want to note it. We need to get busy allowing the Iraqis to rebuild Iraq. If we listen to what these insurgents are saying, they are angry because they do not have electricity, and they blame us for it. Frankly, I do not think they should be blaming us for it. They should be blaming Saddam Hussein for it. But they do blame us. We need to get a reconstruction program that is working. And the reason it is not working, the reason we have spent less than 10 percent of the money that we voted on a bipartisan basis on a variety of occasions to apply, the reason that money has not been spent, $18 billion have been appropriated, less than $2 billion has been spent. Why have they not spent the money? For this reason: this administration has insisted that instead of hiring Iraqis to do the construction and Iraqi businesses and Iraqi employees, they want to hire their pals at Halliburton; and they insisted that American contractors, many of whom happen to be significantly connected to the administration, do this. And the Iraqis are the ones who are unemployed. Those are the people we should be hiring to get this job done. Every Iraqi that gets a job is one less Iraqi willing to join the insurgency. But, no, this administration wanted to make sure Halliburton got the money.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I believe the reason that Halliburton is doing that is that they do not want to deal with the difficulty of hiring Iraqis. With all due respect, we have to get the Iraqis involved in their own economy, or they are never going to be on board in a new government. And this administration, in their lust, in their lust, to continue their relationship with Halliburton, has squandered this opportunity to get Iraqis involved in their own reconstruction. And it has hurt us big time in the insurgency that is now raging across wide swaths of Iraq.

Mr. INSLEE. No-go zones, Mr. Speaker. And the problem is the no-go zones are not going to be no-go zones permanently. At some point we are going to have to ask American sons and daughters to go into Fallujah, and they are going to be fired at by insurgents. And the problem is those insurgents tonight are building bunkers and recruiting and building taps and they are building car bombs. They think many of them are assembled in Fallujah and driven around the country, and we are not rousting those groups out. And we are going to have to face their guns when they are emboldened and empowered and in a tougher position. That is terrible military doctrine. It is a mistake. And it is going to cost American lives. And I think that it is one of those things that needs change.

Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman will yield, you mentioned a pretty explosive word, which is ``incompetence.'' When we have our sons and daughters at risk for their lives, over 1,000 of whom we have lost now, it is a pretty serious charge to suggest that an administration has been incompetent in the prosecution of this mission. So I just want to quote a Republican Senator in this regard, or two Republican Senators in regards to points two and three that I talked about in saying that we need a major change in American policy in Iraq. On point two, the issue of rebuilding Iraq, when Senator Lugar, Republican Senator, was asked---- Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. INSLEE. Well, Mr. Speaker, let me rephrase. When a prominent Republican individual who served in public office in a post that involves a 6-year term was asked why only $1 billion of $18 billion appropriated last year for Iraqi reconstruction, why less than 10 percent of that had actually invested in Iraq, he said, ``Well, this is the incompetence of the administration.'' ``This is the incompetence of the administration.'' That is what this has been. We need someone competent running the operation in Iraq. Point three, the point we have been saying, that our military people are going to be endangered as a result of not training people and getting into these no-go zones, another prominent Republican, who once recently ran for President and suffered grievously at the hands of a fellow Republican in South Carolina, said ``it was a major error in allowing insurgents to keep control of the City of Fallujah after vowing to oust them.'' The same quote: ``As Napoleon said, if you say you are going to take Vienna, you will take Vienna,'' this unnamed prominent Republican person in a 6-year post said. The fact of the matter is, these are major policy failures of this administration. It is costing us in lives, and we need a change. Unfortunately, this administration has one prominent rule in Iraq, and an economic policy, for that matter: Do not bother me with the facts. I told you guys it was going to be roses. I told you we were going to be treated as liberators. Despite the fact we have this horrendous problem in Iraq, we are not going to change our policy one wit.'' We need a fresh policy in Iraq, and, one way or another, we have got to get it.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, there is another aspect of this $87 billion that we need to point out, of whose money the President wanted to spend. He wants to spend our grandchildren's money. Because every single one of those $87 billion he committed to Iraq, which had to be spent in some sense, but instead of us paying for it and dealing with it with taxes, he wanted, and he consciously decided to make it all deficit spending. We had a proposal to pay for it so that our grandchildren would not have that deficit spending obligation on them. Now, why is this? I think this is symptomatic of why we need a new administration with a fresh policy. Winston Churchill said, all I have to offer you is blood, sweat, toil, and tears. This President said, you can fight this battle on the cheap. It will be sugar candy, roses, and champaign corks all the way. And as a result of that, we got $87 billion deficit spending, 1,000 dead, and a silent draft that is going on now drafting our people to serve longer times than they really did sign up for when they went into the military. That is why everybody in this chamber is hearing stories about 50-year old people who left their career for a year, came back, now have to go back for another year, and goodness knows how many years, because they have not committed the troops that are necessary to get this job done like General Shinseki told them. This President wanted to fight this war on the cheap. It has cost us in lives, it has cost us in deficit spending, and we need a new policy. We do not say this just to be critical; we say this to get a new policy in Iraq. Unless we get that, we are heading into deep, deep trouble.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we do have an honest debate and an honest difference of opinion between the two parties here and it is rather stark. Democrats believe that if a Japanese car manufactured in Japan, the brakes fail and injured you or your family and it is through negligence of the manufacturer, you ought to be able to have redress in an American court. The Republicans want to outsource that to the Japanese courts and make you fly to Tokyo to file your lawsuit. If a German car blows up and burns you and your family to a crisp, Democrats believe you ought to be able to go to the American judicial system and have relief. Republicans believe you should outsource your claims to the German courts. But it gets worse than that. If a French car fails and injures your family, Democrats believe you should go to an American court and get American justice. Republicans believe you can outsource that even to the French. We do not even have french fries in our cafeteria any more, but you would be happy to send Americans to the French judicial system. Now, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith) took issue with what I was saying about this claim, and I want to explain to you why this is. First, I want to tell you that the Congressional Research Service, the bipartisan, nonpartisan referee of these matters, agrees with exactly what I have said when they said, ``Consequently it would appear that in certain circumstances a United States citizen or resident injured in this country would not have a judicial forum in the United States in which to seek relief.'' The jury is closed and out. The verdict is in. Your policies have outsourced a lot of jobs, but we do not understand why you want to outsource judicial activity for American citizens. Now, why is that? It is because there is an error apparently in drafting. I do not know if you really intended this but this is what you accomplished, and the reason is even though the statute, and excuse me if I am technical for a moment but this is an important issue. It is Americans' judicial rights. Even where the statute suggests on its face that it would allow an American to sue in any one of three places, where you live or where you are hurt or where the principal place of the business is that hurt you, there is a constitutional principle that says if that corporation does not have a minimal contact where you live or where the injury occurs you cannot sue under the United States Constitution in either one of those circumstances. That is why the Congressional Research Service, the bipartisan or nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, has concluded that the Republican bill wants to outsource our judicial system to the German, French and Japanese judicial systems. That makes no sense whatsoever, and, frankly, I would invite a response to this as to why you would want to do that. The Japanese, they build some okay cars, not as good as American cars of course, but their judicial system is not one that we should have to be exposed to in America. Americans should have access to the American judicial system. We should pass this substitute.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, there is a fatal defect in this bill, and that fatal defect is that it would essentially refuse to give American citizens relief if they were injured by a foreign corporation's clear and palpable negligence. The defect in this bill is that, if you live in Seattle, you are hurt in Portland by a failure of a Tokyo corporation, this bill says you cannot bring a claim anywhere in the United States against a Japanese corporation that injured you unless that corporation happens to have a retail outlet in the State where you live or where the accident happened. And this is a very serious matter. If one lives in Seattle, if they are injured in Portland, and the product that injures them is made in Germany or Japan or England, they are out of luck. They are now shielding out-of-U.S. corporations. I understand the Republican Party's infatuation with outsourcing, but I do not understand why they would expose Americans and say they cannot bring a claim against somebody that makes a foreign car or foreign construction equipment that injures them. If my colleagues think I am just sort of blowing smoke here, I want to read from the Congressional Research Service memo on this subject. It says: ``However, if a defendant's principal place of business was not in the United States, then this option,'' meaning suing here, ``could not be exercised in the United States court. Consequently, it would appear that in certain circumstances, the United States citizen or resident injured in this country would not have a judicial forum in the United States in which to seek relief.'' What this bill is, is the Foreign Corporation Protection Act. And for the life of me, I cannot figure out why they would want on the Republican side of the aisle to deny American citizens an avenue in an American court under the American judicial system some right of protection when a foreign corporation hurts them. What is the possible rationale for that? We need to fix this or reject it.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we have a delicious debate before us because we Democrats believe if Stanley Tool tries to avoid taxes by moving to Bermuda and their tool blows up and puts out your eye, an American ought to have access to the American judicial system in front of an American jury. The Republicans want to outsource the job to Bermuda. If a corporation goes to France and a product blows up and hurts you, we Democrats believe Americans ought to have access to the Americans judicial system. The Republicans want to outsource the jury system to Paris. We do not even have French fries in our cafeteria anymore, and the other side is outsourcing our jobs to France. The same applies to Germany and every other country. The other side has outsourced enough jobs; we are not going to allow the outsourcing of our jury system, too. Support this motion.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I have tremendous respect for the chairman but in this case the Congressional Research Service is right. Here is where they are right. It is a constitutional principle that a court in Washington, for instance, does not have jurisdiction over a Japanese corporation if they do not have minimal contact with Washington; for instance, if they do not have a retail outlet in Washington. So if a Washington resident is injured by a Japanese car, and they have got an enormous retail outlet down in California but their principal place of business, which is the language you chose in this statute, is in Tokyo, you are out of luck as an American. And I am betting on CRS on this one.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk tonight about three types of amnesia that I am afraid are infecting the executive branch's policy, and those three symptoms of amnesia are makings us less safe. This weekend I went to the VFW Post in Redmond, Washington, where a group was holding a car wash to raise money to send incidentals, CDs and telephones and suntan lotion and the like, to our service personnel in Iraq. The thing that was interesting is the people who were there, including the wives and sisters and fathers of the people who are serving in Iraq, and one woman who lost her son in Iraq who came out to the car wash to help her fallen son's former colleagues in Iraq, and what was amazing to me, while these people are pulling together, there is this kind of amnesia developing to forget the loss and casualties we are suffering in Iraq. It is slipping from page 1 to page 3 to page 12 to outside of our consciousness. Frankly, I think the President could do a better job of reminding us of the loss we are suffering in Iraq rather than trying to belittle it or say it is a minimal thing. I have heard people argue that a thousand people lost in America is not that many. I just challenge for them to say that if they had been to the car wash and talked to the mother that I did. One person who did not have to die in combat is too many.

Mr. INSLEE. There was a very startling occurrence that happened yesterday in this regard. Secretary of State Powell said there was no link to 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. Yet the Vice President continues in this effort.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I would point out since the Republicans wanted to show respect for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Roosevelt in the throes of World War II did not say, let us all enjoy a tax cut. He said, let us tighten our belts, grow victory gardens, buy Liberty Bonds, and get this job done. But this President is not willing to ask Americans to make those sacrifices for reasons that we have to ask ourselves why, but he will not do it. And when we talk about the people whose lives are on the line in Iraq, there is a draft already going on in that country. There is a silent draft, and that silent draft is if one was in military service at any time in the last 2 years or 20 years by the sum of what they count, they are potentially going to haul them back in and send them to Baghdad, and that is what they are doing. There is a silent draft going on right now, and it is unfair to the families who had their lives disrupted, who thought their military service was over. And thousands of Americans are getting dragged off of their jobs and away from their families this month because of the poor planning that went on. I want to mention, just talking about the future if I can, as Laurel and Hardy said, you know, this is a fine mess that we are in. But the question is, what do we do now? Because we are in it, and we are in it together. Republicans are in it, Democrats are in it, urban and rural, we are all in this mess together, so what are we going to do? Let me suggest that there are some things we need when it comes to a leader of America right now to find a way to solve the problem in Iraq. I would suggest there are three things we need in a leader right now, in a President right now. Number one, we need a President who can have the respect and good working relationship with the rest of the world, to try to get the rest of the world to pitch in and help in Iraq. We need someone who has not burned his bridges with friends or potential allies, someone who has not offended the rest of the world, someone who has not ended up getting a 90 percent disapproval rating with some of our purported allies on our policy in Iraq, someone who can really lead a world alliance. We have to ask whether we have a President who is capable of that right now. The second thing we need is we need a President who is willing to fire the boobs and incompetents who have made ridiculous decisions that have cost thousands of American lives and injuries. We need somebody who is willing to clear the decks of the individuals who ought to be held accountable for the lack of body armor, the lack of armor, the poor planning, the decision now to let these militias go out and breed where our people are going to suffer eventually when we have to face them. These people need to go. We need a President who is not great friends with these people and who will not fire them. I have to seriously question whether we have a leader right now in the White House who is capable of that. The third thing we need is we need a President who is basically willing to take a fresh approach in Iraq. We need a new strategy in Iraq. We need someone who is truly willing to break with the past, try new approaches, talk to different people, hire different staff, get new intelligence and get new strategies in Iraq. Unfortunately, this President has a quality of refusing to change, no matter what the evidence is. The evidence be darned, he is going to continue the route he chose. That is not good enough right now for America. We need better and we need a fresh approach. This country needs to ask whether we have a leader in the White House who is capable of adopting a fresh approach in Iraq. That is a serious question Americans will be asking this November, and I hope it is something they chew on. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel).

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

Mr. INSLEE. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I want to note one other thing that the administration needs to take responsibility about. The President during his speech during the Republican convention, which was quite a show, and some of us found Zell Miller mildly entertaining, there was a lot of discussion about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and there was one thing that I really respected about President Roosevelt, and that is on December 8, 1941, after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt did not suggest we bomb China, he focused on the group that attacked and killed thousands of Americans, which was the Japanese. This President has not followed Franklin Delano Roosevelt's pattern. Roosevelt said, let us attack the enemy that has attacked us, which in our case was al Qaeda, a fundamentalist Islamic movement that this President has spent the last 2 years trying to confuse the American people, with some success, in confusing al Qaeda with Iraq, and he has done the equivalent of invading China after September 11, and we have suffered accordingly. It is very important for us not to allow the power of propaganda to overwhelm the power of reason, and we cannot allow, with 1,000 Americans dead in Iraq, America to forget that this President had tried to whitewash the situation by calling the war in Iraq as the war on terror when there is no credible evidence of connection of Iraq with September 11, and the President and Vice President know it, and they keep saying it anyway. The independent 9/11 Commission reached that conclusion despite the fact that the President and Vice President did everything they could to thwart the creation of the 9/11 Commission and now accept its recommendations enthusiastically.

Mr. INSLEE. I would like to add, Osama bin Laden is not only free physically, he is free apparently from the interest of the President of the United States who has not mentioned his name, as far as I can tell, for about a year. The man that he promised us he would get dead or alive, this President does not even allow his name to pass his lips because it may distract some of the attention from Iraq. That is way too free for my tastes. I want to mention one other thing about why we have not been as successful with al Qaeda as we should have been. Obviously, cutting off the money of al Qaeda is extremely important. If you can kill the money trail, you can dry up some of their attacks on us. We found out we have more inspectors and investigators with the Department of the Treasury tracking American tourists who go to Cuba than we do tracking the money going to al Qaeda. We are spending over $200 billion a year in Iraq, but we cannot fund enough people to find Osama bin Laden and really cut off his money. We are more interested in Cuba and Iraq. That is a distortion. One other thing I want to mention. We have a tremendous threat in this country, and the President is right about one thing, that there is a real threat against this country. One of those threats is there are 20,000, in a sense, loose nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union that are not in secure locations tonight, that some terrorists could get ahold of. But what have we done to try to increase our rate of locking up that fissionable material so al Qaeda cannot get ahold of it since September 11? What has this administration done? Essentially nothing to improve our efforts to try to lock up that fissionable material. They have not increased their appropriation, as far as I know, a dime to get rid of this material that al Qaeda, we know, is interested in using to attack us. Why not? They are spending $200 billion in Iraq to chase weapons of mass destruction that there were zero weapons of mass destruction, zero nuclear weapons in Iraq. We know there are 20,000 nuclear weapons that are running around the former Soviet Union, some of which were locked up in a chicken shed with a little lock on it you could break with bicycle lock busters, literally; and this administration will not put more money into that effort to lock up those loose nukes. This is a misprioritization.

Mr. INSLEE. The point the gentleman has made is the cost that we have suffered in addition to this horrendous loss of life is that the real war on terrorism has been injured by the war in Iraq, and I want to talk about some of the ways that has happened. Symptom number one of a failed war on terrorism: you do not finish the job against the enemy that attacked you, and we have not finished the job in Afghanistan which is the source of the attack of September 11. September 11 came from a group trained in the camps of Afghanistan; and we appropriately, on a bipartisan basis, started a war in Afghanistan because it was necessary, but now it is, in a way, abandoned by this administration because this administration has not given what we need in Afghanistan to finish the job, to build up a meaningful stable government in Afghanistan. The very place that attacked us has been put on the back burner. Senator Graham the other day disclosed that a year before the Iraq war started, General Franks or one of the generals told him that they had started to move Predators that were being used in the hunt for Osama bin Laden to get ready for the attack on Iraq. So we took our resources against, if I can use the 1941 example, out of the war on Japan and attacked Beijing.