Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

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

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we have come here tonight, my colleagues the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) and others who may join us, as a part of our continued obligation under the Iraq Watch to present a discussion and an honest critique of the administration's policy in Iraq. My colleagues and I have been engaged in this series of discussions now for several months, and we have done this for one simple purpose. We do not intend to allow the incredible commitment by our armed services that are now engaged in Iraq to be forgotten on the floor of the House of Representatives. Too often, people are sent into combat and then forgotten, and what the Federal Government did or did not do in sending them into combat is given little discussion and little note, but tonight of all nights, we think it is appropriate and vital for this chamber to discuss what this Federal Government did and did not do to lead us into our current predicament in Iraq. It is most appropriate for us to do this because tonight we have the very sad duty to report, as now Americans know, that we have lost 1,000 American lives in Iraq, a war started by a President under the belief and statement that weapons of mass destruction threatened the security of the United States. Based on that statement made by the President from the chamber standing behind me some time ago, over 1,000 Americans have lost their lives, and those 1,000 Americans are from 49 States and members of every political party. They are short and tall, rural and urban, and they all served under the flag of the United States and did their duty proudly. We, on a bipartisan basis, honor them because, no matter what they thought of their commander-in-chief's decision to go to war, they gave their highest measure of devotion to their duty, and we honor it, everyone in this chamber. I would like to also not forget the men and women who tonight are rebuilding their shattered bodies from injuries, over 7,000 people, many of whom suffered very, very difficult injuries who tonight are recovering in our hospitals across America, in the Mideast and in Europe. Anyone who has talked to those soldiers and seen the incredible courage in their eyes when they are sitting there with pins in their legs and arms and missing limbs, and you ask them how they are doing and they say I am doing fine, sir; and you ask them what their plans are, and they say I want to get back to my unit as fast as I can; anyone who has seen those young soldiers would be incredibly proud of our people in Iraq. But this does not reduce or obligation to hold the Federal Government accountable for its numerous mistakes in Iraq. It heightens that obligation to blow the whistle on the repeated, continued misjudgments, misstatements, incompetence, negligence and carelessness that has led to this situation in Iraq, and tonight we are going to discuss them. I would like to, if I can, start this discussion with five rosy projections that, unfortunately, we have suffered in Iraq as a result of this administration's rosy projections. I just want to list these quickly. Rosy projection number 1: This administration, and in the persons of the President, flew out to an aircraft carrier with a jaunty looking flight suit, landed on the deck of the carrier, proclaimed mission accomplished with a giant banner on the superstructure of that carrier. Since the President told us mission accomplished, over 800 Americans have died in Iraq. The President's rosy projections were sadly wrong, and there is an emptiness in households and families across America as a result of that wrong rosy projection. Number 2: The President told us that as soon as we could stand up a new government, this new government would be embraced with the warmth of the Iraqis, with rose petals not only at our feet but at the new government's feet, and that this bearing up of support for the Iraqis and their new flag would bring peace and milk and honey to Iraq. Since this new government has been ``stood up,'' we have had an increase in the number of Americans killed in Iraq. Another rosy projection by this President that was flat wrong. Number 3: The President told us by now we would have a secure Iraq, beginning to be capable of having elections. Well, what did we read in the newspapers yesterday? The fact is that huge swaths of Iraq under this administration's policies have been given over to the Taliban and their associates, the militias in Iraq. Fallujah, the place where these folks desecrated the body of four contractors, that our proud marines went in there to do battle, this administration has given up to a militia that essentially is in cahoots with the Taliban and a fundamentalist regime, and we have that now called a ``no-go zone.'' Same in Ramadi, same in Najaf, same in parts of Sadr City. The fact of the matter is the President's policies have ceded huge parts of Iraq to what he says is the enemy. Rosy projection number 3, that we have essentially given up trying to disarm these militias and kicked the can down the road where eventually our military people are going to have to encounter these militias are now arming themselves and building themselves up in these ``no-go zones.'' Rosy projection number 3 that our people are paying for. Number four: The President told us that Iraq would pay for this. You recall the projection by Mr. Wolfowitz who came here and said that Iraqi oil was going to pay for this. Sad joke on the American taxpayers. We are now over $200 billion into it with hundreds of billions of dollars to come, with no projection of how long it will be. Wildly optimistic, and in fact, we find out that the money we have appropriated cannot even be spent because of the lack of planning for the post-conventional war situation in Iraq. Because of this administration's lack of having a plan for the peace, only 2 percent of the money we have appropriated has actually been spent in Iraq of the $18 billion. They will get around to spending it, and U.S. taxpayers will pay through the nose for it, but the fact that this administration had such a rosy projection is going to cost us over hundreds of billions of dollars to the American taxpayer. Rosy projection that was wrong, number 4. Number 5: The President implicitly told us that there would not be war profiteering and gouging in Iraq in these hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, but in fact, we found that Halliburton, this corporation with incredible ties to this administration, has already been subject to millions of dollars of cost overruns which they cannot account for, that the Pentagon is now trying to get our money back for. In fact, they have talked about withholding 15 percent of further payments to Halliburton as a result of this lack of credibility to American taxpayer dollars. Rosy projection number 5. So we would like to say that this President's projections have been accurate, but the sad fact is we stand here tonight with 1,000 Americans who have given their lives in Iraq. We have a continued tale of failed administration policies in Iraq, and this Nation deserves accountability for the people who have made these decisions in Iraq, which have cost us so dearly in life and treasure. In fact, when you look at this entire administration, which has bungled this operation so badly, you cannot find a person who has essentially been held accountable for their multiple failures. There has not been essentially a person who has lost a vacation day or had their little perks taken away or their corner office. This administration has a response to the American people when they are criticized. They simply say you are not an American if you criticize this administration. We are here to say it is not only a duty to criticize, a right to criticize this administration, it is a duty, and we are fulfilling it.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I was just going to offer an answer on how long it was until they got body armor. It was too long. And it is unfortunate that the same people that made that mistake are still running the show in Iraq and not one of them has been held accountable for this foul-up, and we are demanding accountability. Mr. Speaker, I will now yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) who has led the discussion on this subject.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, sometimes I think Democrats are a little too critical of President Bush. Now, it is true that he took a huge surplus and turned it into the largest fiscal deficit in American history; that is true. It is true that he promised Americans that he would protect seniors, and the next day gave Americans the largest Medicare premium increase, essentially a tax increase, in American history, of 17 percent. It is true that he has the largest loss of jobs, over 2.5 million jobs, since Herbert Hoover. But now some Democrats have even criticized the President for refusing to take his physical and thereby squandering $1 million of flight training when he served in the National Guard. I think we need to put that in context. If he continued to fly, he may have crashed the plane. We need to be a little less critical of this President.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I thought I heard everything here, but citing the Dred Scott decision in support of this amendment is like citing the Ku Klux Klan in support of civil rights legislation. This amendment is a Soviet style attack on American freedom, and the reason requires a little look at history. The former Soviet Union had a Constitution, like we do. The former Soviet Union had a Bill of Rights, like we do; very similar to our Bill of Rights. But the former Soviet Union had another little trick. Their little trick was that the executive and legislative branches prohibited the judicial system of the former Soviet Union from enforcing their Bill of Rights, and what did they get? Tyranny. The instructive lesson of the Soviet Union is that we should not go down the path of getting rid of, yes, frustrating, nonunderstandable courts that sometimes do not agree with Congress. But I guess the authors of this amendment feel that they are smarter than Thomas Jefferson and smarter than any court that ever lived. This is not the only right that is going to be on the chopping block. Once we do away with the independence of the American judicial system, which has never been done in American history, ever; this Chamber has never, ever cut the knees out of the American Bill of Rights in American history, and this is not like the first time we have a controversial issue that may end up in the courts. Civil rights was controversial. Gun rights are controversial. It may be controversial if this Congress passes a gun rights bill like the Brady Bill and then it goes to the U.S. judicial system to see if it is constitutional, that is controversial. But where will this stop? I may ask the drafters, why did you stop here? Why, if you believe the PATRIOT Act is constitutional, why do you not just do away with the Supreme Court and not let them review that as well? This is a first step to tyranny. It ought to be rejected.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I speak in favor of this bill for the fundamental reason that this protects an extremely successful tenet of the American innovation economy. I look around my district and what I see is a collection of companies, 10, 20, 30 employees doing incredible things and frequently using stock options. These are companies which may be on the cusp of actually developing a cure for diabetes, a company with a couple dozen employees which may develop a cure for stroke, a company with a couple dozen employees that have a solution so you cannot see muzzle fire from our soldiers' rifles. These type of companies use this system to bring in talent, and bringing in talent is absolutely fundamental to the innovation economy of America. Stock options have been one of the most successful mechanisms to make sure that when someone has a good idea, they can marry it with good brains around them who can come in without a paycheck. Let us preserve and protect the ability to use stock options.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. The fact of the matter is, and the sad fact is that this administration has taken its eye off the ball of the people who killed almost 3,000 Americans on September 11, al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. When is the last time you actually heard the President of the United States say the name Osama bin Laden? It is like he is the great forgotten person in this terrible tragedy that we suffered. I remember him and I think that our focus ought to remain on him. Let me give an anecdote why it is not. We found out the other day in the Committee on Financial Services, the secret of stopping terrorists, you cut off their money. You cut off their money, you kill the beast, in part. We found out that this administration has more people, more agents of the Treasury Department, this is the agency that is supposed to be in charge of lopping off the conduit of funds to al Qaeda, this administration has more agents chasing American tourists going to Cuba than it does chasing off money that goes to al Qaeda. That is just one sort of sad indication that this administration has not focused on where the real threat has been which is al Qaeda which is still out there and which is still a meaningful threat.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I will answer that question. The reason we attacked Iraq is that the day after September 11, maybe it was 2 days after, it has been reported that the Secretary of Defense goes in to the President and says now is our chance, now is our chance to go after Iraq. This was like 48 hours after September 11. There was no evidence whatsoever that Iraq was associated with September 11, but this President and his political advisers knew one thing. They knew if they could fool the American people into believing that Saddam Hussein was behind September 11, the neo-cons could con the American people into supporting a war in Iraq, and to some degree, their maliciousness was successful to the detriment of our proud men and women in service who are there tonight in the heat of Iraq, 130 degrees, suffering, dying in the sands of Iraq because an American President's administration was not forthright with the American people and consciously, willfully gave false information to our fellow countrymen. This is not just a little happenstance. We have a memo from a political operative of the President about how to talk about this. This was a cold-blooded, calculated act, and you talk about having your missed priority and what country you would be involved in. I have been asked by one of my constituents if I have seen the movie ``Fahrenheit 9/11.'' He said, Jay, is it true, did the President allow the family members of Osama bin Laden, who are Saudi Arabian, to fly out of the country when all the other planes were grounded in the country? Did this administration let his friends from Saudi Arabia fly out of the country without a full and thorough investigation of their relationship? Did that really happen? The sad fact is, yes, it did, and we have discovered that, in fact, did occur in our Committee on Financial Services hearing, and I pressed for an answer of who made that decision. I never got that answer, who made that decision, and 3 days later, the President is on the south portico of the White House smoking cigars with Prince Bandahar, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia, where two-thirds of the terrorists came from that attacked this country, and we let their families fly out without even a decent interrogation of them. Talk about having a mixed- up relationship about who our enemies are and who our friends are.

Mr. INSLEE. Well, I am going to close with a couple of comments. We are here to discuss a basic principle of American democracy, and that is, accountability, that people in public service need to be held accountable, both for their successes and their failures. There is a group that we should recognize for valor and effectiveness and honor in our government and our government personnel, and that is our Army, navy, air corps, Coast Guard, marines, who are serving in Iraq. Those folks deserve to be held accountable by being praised for their tremendous service to this country in difficult circumstances tonight, and they are still continuing to suffer the pangs of war tonight, and we have come here to make sure that their sacrifice is not forgotten and that we treat them with as great an honor as we can and that we restore our Veterans Administration health care system so that when they come home they are not exposed to the cuts in the veterans health care system that this administration has proposed. This group of public servants, we cannot forget their contribution. It should never be forgotten, but there is another group of public servants whose massive failures and deceit should not be forgotten either, and that is the Bush administration who has made at least 10 major failure, falsehoods, negligence and carelessness, to the great cost of the American public, and those public servants should not be forgotten in their failure either and should be held accountable, and we will continue to have this discussion until they are. Would the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) like to close? Do you have any closing comments?

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we come to the floor this evening in the continued responsibility of keeping a very close eye on this administration's policy in Iraq in the continued series of what we style the Iraq watch. I will be joined by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) this evening, and hopefully the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland.) We have been now coming once a week to the floor of the House because we believe that the House has a duty not to sweep under the rug the accumulation of errors, misjudgments and deceptions that have been foisted on the American people by the Bush administration leading to the war in Iraq. The reason we are here every week is that there is too much tendency to forget the sacrifices that are being made by our men and women in uniform in Iraq; to treat them as sort of background noise; to sort of say, well, the casualties are down to several a week, so we can just sort of forget about Iraq. That is wrong. We have been here for months blowing the whistle on this administration's repeated failures in Iraq, and we will continue to do so, because this Nation owes it to our men and women in uniform to continue to be vigilant about what this administration is doing and not doing in Iraq. Perhaps, even more importantly, we owe it to the cause of democracy itself not to allow it to go unnoted when a President of the United States starts a war based on deception of the American people. We are here to say there is perhaps no greater abuse of democracy, no more dangerous event in the great American democratic experiment, than for an American President to foist falsehoods on the American people to start a war, which we believe occurred in this case. Now, I would like to start our discussion tonight by quickly setting the stage for the history of the Iraq war to date. Unfortunately, this administration has made not 1, not 2, but 10 serious mistakes, deceptions, errors of judgment, negligence, and carelessness that have led to the troubles that our people are facing in Iraq. I would like to run through those very quickly before I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt). There are 10 major errors the Bush administration has made in Iraq. Error number 1: This administration told America in no uncertain terms, with no doubt, with no vagueness, with no ambiguity whatsoever, that it was required to start a war in Iraq because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The President said, in a culmination of his multiple statements, and this must not be forgotten; on August 26, 2002, the President said, ``Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.'' And there was not only no weapons of mass destruction, there was plenty of doubt. This President's statement was false, and this was falsehood number 1. Error number 2: The President told us on repeated occasions, and his administration, that they had clear, convincing and cogent evidence that there was a working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda which led to the attack on September 11. They told us this over and over and over again, and now that the evidence has been made clear from the multiple reports that have come in on a bipartisan basis, this President's statement that Saddam Hussein was associated with the attack on this country, this venal, evil attack on this country was false, and it led to a war. And there is no greater error, breach of democracy than an American President saying that when this was false. And it continues to this day. With all of this mountain of evidence showing the falsehood of this President's statement, the Vice President of the United States has the chutzpa, if one can stretch that word that far, to try to continue to foist this on the American people, and it is falsehood number 2. Number 3: The American people were told repeatedly that we would be welcome as liberators in Iraq. We would be welcome with rose petals at our feet. We would be welcome with nothing but clear sailing because the people would see us as liberators. There is no question in the belief that Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant, and there is no question he abused thousands of Iraqis. But this President made a massive misjudgment by listening to Mr. Chalabi, one of the great sycophants in failures of predictions in international history, and the President was suckered and the American people were suckered by this misstatement, and we have paid dearly with our treasure and our lives and the health of our service personnel in Iraq. Falsehood number 4: This President ignored the clear, professional judgment of people who said we needed to have more boots on the ground to prevent anarchy in Iraq, but this President ignored that advice because he has wanted to fight this fight on the cheap from day 1, and we have suffered as a result. General Shinseki told him that we needed several hundred thousand people in Iraq to quell disturbance after the Iraq war, and he ignored it, and our people paid dearly for error and falsehood number 4. Number 5: The President said we did not need the United Nations, we could go in there alone, as long as we had the Philippines and a couple of other small island nations. Well, the Philippines have now withdrawn. This President decided to go it alone in Iraq, and our people have suffered dearly. Falsehood number 5. Falsehood number 6: The President said that by implication, everything would be aboveboard. There would not be any war profiteering in Iraq, people would not make millions of dollars worth of profits in Iraq. Now we see Halliburton, this company so intimately tied with this administration, reaping millions of dollars of taxpayers' money, wrongfully. The GAO has reported on it. This is a scandal, and Harry Truman rooted out world profiteering in World War II. We need to get to the bottom of this war profiteering by Halliburton and the like. Falsehood number 6. Falsehood number 7, and error number 7: This President and this administration led us down one of the most embarrassing breaches of American integrity, and that is the horrendous occasions of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, and it happened because people at the top of this administration gave a green light to stretching our well-accepted rules of following the Geneva Convention. The memos are now in and public information that multiple memos were sent saying that we did not have to give the protections of the Geneva Convention to people. This is something we do to protect our own troops so that they will be not abused if they are captive. This is a long held principle of America. But out of hubris, out of outright arrogance, this administration ignored those rules and we have suffered in the eyes of the world grievously. Make no mistake, 99.9 percent of our troops are doing a magnificent job, but this was error number 7. Error number 8: This President sent American troops into battle without adequate armor. Even today, our troops are driving around thin- skinned Humvees that should have armor, and I believe our people have been injured with shrapnel grievously. Error number 9, and this is one that is going to haunt us for a long time: The President started and continued a war with absolutely no plan whatsoever in how to pay for it. He has tried to hide the ball over and over again on the costs of this war to the American taxpayer, and he is still doing it. This year, this budget my colleagues in the majority party put out with $25 billion, we know it is going to be $60 billion next year. There is no question about this. Why did they hide this information from the American people? Do they think the American people will be so sleepy they will ignore the fact that another $60 billion will go to Iraq instead of schools and health care in America? Do they think that will be forgotten? I do not think so. This deficit is now in the billions of dollars and it is growing rapidly because the President wants our children to pay for the Iraq war rather than us. And this is that continued attitude of trying to fight this war on the cheap. This President needs to be honest and forthright with the American people about the real costs of this war, which are grievous. Error number 9. And error number 10: And this one rankles me greatly as a person who has read the casualty reports of what hot steel and shrapnel has done to our troops, sending our troops into combat without flak jackets, and it took us a year-and-a-half to get this administration to get flak jackets. Is that too much to ask of an administration for our troops? Error number 10. Those are a quick summary of the errors that have been made in Iraq. Today we heard about some new ones. We found out that, in fact, it was Iran that was allowing 10 of the terrorists who injured us so terribly on September 11, they were passing through Iran, not Iraq. The President never leveled with us and told us that. It turns out it was Iran that was trying to buy the Iranian yellow cake, not Iraq. It is not a good enough excuse that they are one letter apart. That is not a good enough excuse for this President. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

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

Mr. INSLEE. I think it is important to realize what this President's unilateralism has done to the American taxpayer by putting it in context, vis-a-vis the first Iraq war, because the first President Bush did in fact work with the rest of the world community, and as a result, the rest of the world paid well over the majority. I think it was close to 80, 90 percent of the total cost of the first Iraq war. It was not borne by the American taxpayer. But the cost of this second President Bush's go-it-alone strategy to the American taxpayer is enormous, because as of May the American taxpayers had spent $174 billion. Now, to put that in perspective, we are going to pass the total inflation-adjusted cost of World War I sometime early next year in the cost of Iraq, which was $199 billion. And, again, the insidious part about this is that the President, because he is unwilling to do what Winston Churchill did, which was to call for blood, toil, sweat and tears, this President just wants to put this war on the credit card, and every single dollar of the Iraq war is going to deficit spending. We have a $7 trillion debt. This President Bush's budget is out of balance $368 billion a year, and he is adding every single dollar of this going straight on our national debt. And it is our children that are going to suffer as a result of this. Why? Because the President is unwilling to really face the truth in Iraq. He was unwilling to face the truth about weapons of mass destruction. He was unwilling to face the truth about a purported connection with al Qaeda. He was unwilling to face the truth about how many troops we were going to need. He was unwilling to face the truth about the armor that we needed. He was unwilling to face the truth, you name it, about anything you can think of in Iraq. And this is a continuing sore on our fiscal house as well as the suffering that we have had. Mr. Speaker, I will yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

Mr. INSLEE. I bet they have got 80 bean counters that the American taxpayer are funding who work for Halliburton. This administration has no problem dishing out the dough for Halliburton and we cannot get 80 inspectors to track down Osama bin Laden. How is that for a sad commentary on taking your eye off the ball. Now, I want to suggest how this has happened a little bit, how this emphasis has been misplaced. And it has because of this President's administration's focus on Iraq and their efforts to hoodwink the American people into believing that the real culprit or at least one of the culprits behind September 11 was Saddam Hussein. I want to spend just a moment talking about that because I think one of the single most serious affronts and dangers in a democratic system is for elected officials, particularly in the powerful position of the President, to tell things to the American people which are false that end up starting a war. We found out that last September a poll of American people said that 65 percent of American people believed that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks on us on September 11, and Saddam Hussein has a list longer than my arm of his depredations against the Iraqi people. But 65 percent of the Americans had been convinced by someone that Iraq was behind the attack on September 11. Now, who was that someone? Where did the American people get that idea which has turned out to be false and it is pretty clear where they got it. They got it from the President of the United States who was standing right there and tried to convince, and he did by and large, convince the American people of something that is false. The President did not let this slip on one iota. We all make mistakes and misspeak on occasion. This was a concerted, organized and consistent effort to fool the American people into believing that the culprit was Saddam Hussein behind September 11. Look at some of his quotes. May 1, 2003, the President says, ``The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of al Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding.'' Vice President Cheney, September 14, 2003, says, ``If we are successful in Iraq, then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault for the many years but most especially on September 11.'' What do we find the truth is? Our intelligence people knew at that time but was shielded from the American people? The bipartisan committee under the chairmanship of a Republican Governor Keen concluded there was ``no credible evidence of a link between al Qaeda and the attacks against the United States.'' No credible evidence. Not some credible evidence but not much. Not just a scintilla of credible evidence. Not a couple of ounces. They said no credible evidence, but this President stood right there and started a war based on a falsehood, and he knew he was doing this to the American people and he is responsible for this. He is personally accountable for this and the American people need to hold him accountable for this depredation and affront to democracy as soon as they can.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with my colleagues information that raises serious concerns about the development of a free-market system in Russia. Many of my constituents who develop products such as software and biological drugs rely on the enforcement of strong intellectual property rights laws and copyright protection, and therefore have an interest in ensuring that countries such as Russia maintain fair and enforceable laws in this regard. For this reason, there is cause for concern regarding the Russian government placing significant pressure on SPI, the company that produces the Stolichnaya beverage, in an effort to reclaim the intellectual property rights of its brands. Stolichnaya, nicknamed Stoli to many Americans, is one of many brands of production the Russian government is attempting to reclaim from SPI in the wake of the privatization of other beverage companies in the 1990's. I am concerned about the implications of such actions on international global property rights, Russia's potential WTO and G-8 membership, and the direction of Russian Democracy and rule of law. This case is emblematic of a general situation and is part of a pattern of disrespect for the rule of law that has unnerved foreign investors who are concerned about long-term economic, legal and political stability of Russia. If we are to hope to crack down on the copyright infringements on software produced in the Puget Sound, I believe that proper enforcement of this issue is an important step. I would like to offer my colleagues some background on SPI and its issues. SPI is a Dutch-based company that owns the trademark rights to a large number of beverage brands including Russia's most famous brands, Stolichnaya and Moscovskaya as well as Russkaya and Limonnaya. It is my understanding that the SPI Group acquired the rights for these trademarks by means of buying out the minority shareholders of a Russian company, which owned the above-mentioned trademarks worldwide and was privatized between 1990-1992. It also assumed a $50 million debt that was inherited by the previous owner from its state-owned predecessor. SPI has since invested another $100 million to develop into a successful international competitor. The SPI Group has registered the trademarks for the 43 brands in more than 150 countries. It has a 10-year distribution deal with Allied Domecq in the U.S. as well as a distribution deal with First Drinks in the UK and Bacardi in Greece. Last year, SPI recorded sales of $680 million. This success, however, has merely brought the company to the forefront of the debate over who owns these trademarks. It is also my understanding that from 2000 onwards, certain entities within the Russian State have started various actions against SPI to obtain its trademark registrations. In late 2001, in a case brought by the Russian State Trademark Organization, the Russian courts ruled that the original privatization of the company that owned the brand before SPI was invalid (on a technicality) and returned the rights for 17 brands controlled (now) by the SPI Group to the Russian Ministry of Agriculture. Since then, SPI, while producing the product in Russia, has been forced to move its bottling plant to Riga in Latvia, after the Russian authorities seized and blocked its exports from the Russian port of Kaliningrad. Various heated legal battles have been fought in a number of Russian and foreign courts as SPI continues to sell Stolichnaya internationally. In Russia, a company resurrected by the Government markets its own Stolichnaya brand after confiscating back the trademark there. On 4 March 2002, the Leninsk-Kuznetskiy City Court seemingly resolved the dispute by ruling that the Ministry of Agriculture had illegally registered 17 trademarks belonging to SPI, including the Stolichnaya trademark, and ordered that SPI be reinstated as the registered trademark owner. However, Russian authorities ignored the Leninsk-Kuznetskiy City Court's ruling and employed intimidation and police-state tactics to grab the company's assets and trademark rights for its own purposes. Some examples of these tactics include: The Government's Federal Security Service, in a letter dated March 5, 2002, ordering Kaliningrad Customs to prohibit bulk export of Stolichnaya produced by SPI in Kaliningrad. The confiscation of more than 150,000 cases of SPI products seized in Kaliningrad along with related packaging material. The filing of criminal charges levied against Audrey Skurikhin, president of SPI Spirits-Russia, and its Kaliningrad facility. As a result of these events, it is my understanding that the Ministry of Agriculture currently produces these products in Russia with virtually identical labeling and uses libel and intimidation to force distributors and customers to stop doing business with SPI. In addition, the Russian Patent Agency gave the rights for the re- nationalized trademarks to the newly incorporated company of the Russian Ministry for Agriculture. International courts have ruled in favor of SPI. Court rulings in October 2002 in Hamburg, Germany and May 2003 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, rejected the lawsuits brought against SPI, substantiating SPI's claims. Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, the SPI case is about something larger and more fundamental for Russia and its relationship with the United States and other nations of the world--adherence to the rule of law and political, social and economic freedom. SPI is an example of the need to uphold the rule of law and ensure a better business environment for Russian business. A stable and democratic Russia, based on a rule of law, is critical to U.S. interests; not only for U.S. firms interested in doing business there, but also for the overall, long-term U.S.- Russia relationship. Many of my constituents depend on adherence to the rule of law and copyright protections to ensure that their products, particularly software and biotechnology, are not stolen. We should not let this SPI case set precedence or be a harbinger for software and other U.S. industries.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, while I was watching the spectacular fireworks July 4 over the Washington Monument, I was reminded that our Revolution and experiment in freedom and liberty is still going on. We are still faced with struggles to protect our basic freedoms. We are still faced with the need to occasionally rein in unchecked authority of the executive branch of government. We still need to stand up for the proposition that no Chief Executive should be able to throw into a dark, deep cell an American citizen without eventually affording that citizen a trial. That is a basic American proposition. We still believe that reviewing an incarceration decision by the judicial system is the best way to ensure both security and liberty. And make no mistake, we face real threats to our physical safety, and those miscreants ought to be punished to the full extent of the law. But we have always founded our democracy on the proposition that detention ultimately must be subject to a hearing and a review, and we should not abandon that principle now out of fear. In the words of Supreme Court Justice Stevens, we ``have created a unique and unprecedented threat to the freedom of every American citizen,'' and that ``unconstrained executive detention for the purpose of investigating and preventing subversive activity is the hallmark of the Star Chamber.'' Freedom is not free. It demands us to stand up against threats to freedom. It calls for us to speak against unchecked executive authority, just like what was done in 1776. And while I disagree with the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman), I am against the right of any President to throw someone in a dark cell and never give him a trial.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Well, I appreciate this, and I would like to contrast the phony, alleged sovereignty in Iraq with the real sovereignty and democracy in the United States; and this is a thought I had while sitting on the West Lawn of the Capitol watching the fireworks that were so spectacular on July 4th over the Washington Monument. And as I was looking at the fireworks, I was thinking about some of our work on the Iraq Watch, because the thought struck me that the reason we became a democracy, and such a strong one, is we had people who were rebellious and questioning and demanding against their government. We had a bunch of people in the 18th century who were rebellious to King George, who abused the trust that this monarch had of his people, who was not honest with his people, who was fraudulent with his people, that got his people into difficult positions without their consent. And the thought struck me that that rebellious, demanding, questioning attitude that the patriots had that started this country is the same attitude of folks who are questioning this President who has not told the truth about the American people that started this war; and we ended up a sovereign country because we are demanding. And I just note that as a theme tonight of our Iraq Watch that we demand the truth from our government, and the truth is that this phony allegation of sovereignty in Iraq is what I might call rose petal number 512, because this entire Iraq policy has not been based on reality. It has been based on a series of rose petals. Number one was we were told by Mr. Wolfowitz, rose petals literally would be strewn at our feet. Rose petal number two is when we were told that when we just caught Uday Hussein, the insurgency would stop. Then we were told when the other Hussein brother was caught, the insurgency would stop. Rose petal number 300, I think was when they said Saddam was caught, the insurgency would collapse. Rose petal number 412 was when they said all of these people who are doing violent acts in Iraq, they are just a bunch of foreigners, and as soon as we get the foreigners out, it is not the Iraqi people who were upset we were running their country, it is just these people from Syria. Turned out yesterday we found, like, 5 percent of the people in our custody are outside of Iraq. The problem we have got is some Iraqis we are battling with are another rose petal. And this is the ultimate rose petal that this administration is trying to foist on us, the American people, that unfortunately is not going to work. We lost three Marines today following the ``sovereignty'' rose petal. The fact is we have got to face reality in Iraq. This administration has never faced reality in Iraq. This administration has consistently given us misinformation; and until this administration changes its attitude, or the people in the White House change, we are going to be in trouble in Iraq. You know, look at the situation. We keep hearing about, oh, there is nothing but good news in Iraq, about all these rebuilding programs, and we have people who are working very hard, people in the military are working hard. I am sure some of the people at Halliburton are working hard, too. It is too bad they are charging us twice as much for meals as they are supposed to be, but I am sure they are working hard. But when an assessment was done, I believe by the GAO, they found that less than 2 percent, less than 2 percent of the reconstruction projects that we voted in October to fund have been done; 140 out of 2,300 reconstruction projects have been done. Electricity is still not working in Baghdad as much as it was for the average person before the war. Yet we continue to get these rose petals that the administration tries to feed us, and it is this type of attitude based on falsehood and mysticism that have got us in this problem.

Mr. INSLEE. That is right. He said the Iraqi oil is going to pay for all of this. Look what he said the other day when he was asked what happened. He said, ``I think there was probably too great a willingness to believe that once we got to 55 people on the black list, the rest of those killers would stop fighting.'' Talk about rose-colored glasses, where people are committing suicide bombings to think that the next day, they were going to join the chamber of commerce, when we decided there was a new government in town. This was happy talk that is resulting in the deaths of our soldiers today and the incapacitation of the greatest military on Earth. Just to give an example of how bad it is, I will tell my colleagues, if I were a soldier holding a 50-caliber on the top of a Humvee, I would be proud of the people I serve with; but I would not be very proud of the civilian folks who have gotten me in this predicament on the streets of Baghdad. Look at this answer from General Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the civilians of the intelligence community and the lack of intelligence that our soldiers have been given. He was asked recently during Senate testimony whether the Iraqi insurgency was being coordinated from a central hub, and he responded, ``The intelligence community as far as I know will not give you an answer because they can't give me an answer.'' So we have these young men and women posted on streets in Iraq and the civilian folks have not given them intelligence to figure out if this is even a centrally planned insurgency. This is a huge, ineffective, incapable, negligent planning of a war; and we have not even started talking about how we got into the war.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to ask the question why we are in this fatal, mortal, disastrous situation in Iraq. Why are we in this situation where we are calling up people whose military service was essentially over? Why? We have put two of the training brigades that act as the enemy at various forts around this country, they pose as the enemy, and that is why we have such a well-trained Army. We have three of those Army units, and two of them have now been sent to Iraq to fight the Iraqi insurgents. We are not training our soldiers adequately. Why are we in this debacle? I want to suggest it is just a continuation of the movie ``South Pacific.'' Those World War II veterans remember that there was a song called ``Happy Talk,'' happy, happy, happy talk; and that is what this administration has planned a war over was happy talk. Look at Paul Wolfowitz, the Assistant Secretary of Defense who came to us and told us that the American taxpayers would not have to pay a dollar for this operation. Remember those predictions?

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I want to note getting back to the war on terrorism, where is Osama bin Laden? Where is Osama bin Laden? Why is the President not talking about Osama bin Laden, who is free tonight threatening our citizens where they live in our neighborhoods? We found out last week that this administration is spending five times more money tracking people who travel to Cuba than they are trying to interdict the money going to Osama bin Laden, who is continuing a threat to this country. This is one example of this administration taking their eye off the ball of the guy who killed almost 3,000 Americans. We are going to continue this discussion.

Mr. INSLEE

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

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I am very disappointed in my Republican colleagues on the Committee on Rules who did not allow the House to consider an effort to get refunds from Enron for our consumers. But, nonetheless, I want to rise to defend the Republican Vice President of the United States who this morning is taking some criticism and grief because he used some non-king's English on the floor of the Senate while discussing Halliburton. I wanted to put that in context, because, you know, that happens to people sometimes when they get angry. For instance, when my consumers open up their power billings in Snohomish County, Washington, and find out they have gone up 52 percent because Enron has stolen millions of dollars from them, sometimes they think, if not say, an expletive. Sometimes when people find out that millions of dollars were stolen from them, but FERC refused to lift a finger to help them get their money back, sometimes my constituents at least think for a moment of using something that is not in the dictionary. Sometimes when my constituents find out that this administration refused to lift a finger to help the West Coast as we were going down in flames, sometimes my constituents think about using language that is not acceptable in Sunday school. And sometimes when my constituents find out that when we went on a bipartisan basis to the vice president of the United States and begged him to help us solve this problem, because 32 percent of all the generating capacity was turned off at the moment that the stoplights were out in California, and he looked at us, and obviously someone was gaming the system, obviously the Enrons of the world were manipulating the system, obviously there were violations of Federal law, he looked at us and said, ``You know what your problem is? You just don't understand economics.'' Well, we do understand economics. We just do not understand Enronomics, and we do not understand how this administration could turn its back on Americans. We should forgive the Vice President for his momentary lapse, but we should never forgive this administration for failing to stand up to Enron.

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Chairman, blaming the Enron scandal on Bill Clinton, with all due respect, give us a break. The only malediction in this country you have not laid at the feet of Bill Clinton is Dick Cheney's vocabulary malfunction on the Senate floor, and I suppose that will be next. We listen to these tapes, and the Enron traders were scandalous scoundrels who were smart. Do my colleagues know what they said on these tapes? We cannot wait until George Bush is President because maybe then we will have Ken Lay as Secretary of Energy. They understood whose side their bread was buttered and they got what they wanted. They got an administration that sat on their hands while Enron got into our pockets to the tune of over $8 billion, and they did nothing. And now the Republican Party, and we very much appreciate the gentleman from Ohio's (Mr. Hobson) agreeing to this small little amendment, but you are denying us the ability for this Chamber to do exactly what the gentleman from California (Mr. Ose) says we should do: change the law, if that is necessary, to get refunds from Enron. You will not allow this Chamber to vote on that. The gentleman from California (Mr. Ose) comes here and says, If you do not like the law, change it, but we will not allow a vote to do it. Let me tell my colleagues why maybe that is necessary. We need one or two things to happen. The fact of the matter is we have written FERC. I have wrote and many other Members have written FERC saying that they have concluded there was a scandal, they have concluded there was theft, they have concluded there was manipulation, but they refuse to give us refunds. And what did Mr. Pat Wood write back and say to me? ``Therefore, FDA Section 206 does not permit retroactive refund relief for rates covering periods prior to the refund effective date established on complaint or the initiation of Commission investigation, even if the Commission determines that such past rates were unjust or unreasonable.'' It does not matter how many of these records we get. Your administration under George Bush and Dick Cheney, friends of Ken Lay, are not going to act. Your administration has said if we get a videotape of Ken Lay using all kinds of expletives to take money out of our pockets, you have decided you are not going to act. And that is wrong. The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) says we cannot allow an amendment because this is an appropriation bill. My question is I would like to know the date the House of Representatives, which has now spurned two efforts to get relief from Enron, I want to know the date the House of Representatives is going to give Americans an opportunity to vote to get refunds on an Enron amendment. I am going to ask the gentleman a real question. What date is this House going to vote to do that?

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

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Chairman, I reclaim my time. The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) is incapable of giving us a date. I would like to yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), if he would be so kind, if he is comfortable with this, in advising us in what situation he may allow to come to the floor of this House an amendment.