Jim McDermott

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the erudite lecture on the tax structure of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan). I know he sits on the Committee on Ways and Means, and he knows we have not had a single hearing on any kind of tax reform bill the whole time he has been on the committee. It is good to come out here and send these letters to the Congress. I do not know who this Congress is. When we send the sense of the Congress, where do these go? Do these go to the leadership or somewhere, or up in the air, or over to the Senate?

Mr. McDERMOTT. I would ask the gentleman, Mr. Speaker, when are they going to bring something to the full committee? I do not sit on that subcommittee.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume just to finish up. We have a tax structure, and we are all going to vote for this foolishness; and I would suggest to the Clerk of the House that you not throw these resolutions away, because you can just bring them out again next year. We will be back here at the same old place with the same old tired rhetoric. They will not have done anything more about this issue than they have this year. So I think we could at least save a little money by not reprinting this kind of nonsense. We passed a tax bill last spring; and I do not remember the exact figure, but something like 75 percent of the benefit went to people who make more than $100,000 in this country. Now, if that is a fair tax structure, I will be darned. I mean, I have to relearn the meaning of fairness. The whole idea of a tax structure is to pay on one's ability to pay. Ideas like the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder), who comes out here with a sales tax, the idea being that we will put a sales tax on everybody and that will be fair. Of course, ordinary people have to buy food and clothes and medicine and gasoline and a whole bunch of things; they do not have any choice whatsoever. So they have to pay the tax. Rich people, well, of course, they have to buy food and gas and medical care and whatnot; but all of the rest of the money they earn, they do not pay any taxes under that kind of a structure. That is not fair. Everybody knows it. That is why we can never bring that thing out here seriously and debate it on the floor. You would get eaten alive in the press when the American people figured out what you are talking about. I know what my colleagues are doing today; they are really laying the groundwork for their press releases. We will all leave in a couple of days and you all have to have your April 15 press release: ``I voted to change the unfair tax structure. I was working in Washington all last week trying to change the unfair tax structure that is burdening my constituents'' and other silliness that will be in the papers. This is not going to do anything, everybody knows it will not do anything, and it is not going to make anybody do anything. We are just sending another letter to the minister telling him to get well. I see the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) is here. He has a great chart that is too small for anybody to read, but we are going to put it up anyway; and we will go through with this so we can get out of here. So I want the gentleman to have his press releases. Are the gentleman's press releases related to that?

Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I appreciate that. Explain it to my mother who is watching this, will you? Because she really wants to understand how this fair tax structure, when she is living on Social Security, why she has to pay a 60 percent sales tax, because I have no idea. For all of the people living on Social Security, if the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder) succeeded, they would get a 60 percent flat tax on everything they bought. It is so nonsensical, I do not know how my colleagues can stand out here with a straight face and offer it up here. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that my name be removed as a sponsor of H.R. 1119. It was an error that my name was added to the bill, since I did not authorize the action.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor with an issue that I feel the Members of this House should think about. The BBC carried a story on March 27 saying that there was proof of biological weapons found. They found protection suits, gas masks; and officials argued that these precautions were not to counter the threat of coalition attacks, as the Iraqis would know that the United Kingdom and U.S. forces in the gulf do not possess chemical and biological weapons. Mr. Hoon, who is the Secretary in the British Government, conceded that the discovery of the suits was obviously not conclusive proof that Iraqi forces were set to use chemical or biological weapons, but he added, ``It's clearly indicative of an intention, otherwise why equip his own forces to deal with a threat which he knows we do not have?'' I just received an e-mail message from one of my friends in the British House of Lords who said to me there was a news story on the BBC this morning about the U.S. administration saying they may be prepared to use nonlethal chemical weapons in Iraq in an urban situation where it would be preferable to stun people rather than kill them. Now I do not know how we put those two stories together. We think the Iraqis are getting ready to do something; but the BBC, the very same, carries the story which we will never find in an American newspaper or on American television that we are talking about using chemical weapons. My correspondent went on to say this would be illegal; they are very nasty substances and can kill children. They would be effective against military forces equipped with even rudimentary gas masks. I am sure my colleagues will be speaking out against such a thing. However, it might help them to know that I am hoping to ask our government what action they would take in such a situation. ``My party will certainly call for the U.K. troops to cease work with American forces if they use illegal chemical weapons, even nonlethal ones. If it happens during the Easter recess, we would call for a recall of Parliament to debate it.'' Mr. Speaker, I bring this to the floor because the media in this country has done a terrible job reporting the war. They give us one side, they are all embedded inside our military, and they get whatever they are supposed to put out about what is going on. They are not looking broadly across the horizon at what is happening. The Washington Post carried a story today that the American people are so dissatisfied with the American press that the number one hit on the Internet is Al Jazeera, a Qatar television station that provides another point of view. Americans are trying to find out what the truth is. Mr. Speaker, I do not know, I cannot make head nor tail out of this. I looked quickly to see if I could find the story, but it is not written in the BBC. I have no reason to believe that my correspondent would not tell me the truth. I believe this Congress should look into this issue. If we are going to start a war in which we are going after a country and we say they have weapons of mass destruction, we know it, but we have not found any, and now the story comes out that we are getting ready to use them. Remember what happened in Moscow when the Chechnyan rebels took over that theater with all those people in there, and the Russian Army used a nonlethal chemical weapon to stun the people, and they had several hundred die? The question is, are we prepared to use those on civilians in Iraq or how do we keep it only on the military and not on the civilians? When gas is spread, it goes around, and people breathe it. The United States Congress should be made aware of this. I do not go to the secret briefings because I want to be able to talk out here about what I hear in the general public. I do not think that they will tell Members in a secret briefing whether they will use it, but Congress should demand from the people in the war department and the White House as to whether or not they intend to use any kind of nonlethal chemical weapons. Are they talking about tear gas? What are they talking about? We do not want to be a part of doing the very thing that we accuse the Iraqis of.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take my special order at this time.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 153 will undoubtedly pass this morning. Many members, having read the summary, are probably uneasy because the resolution asks Americans to pray on behalf of the American Armed Forces and people--not for the British soldiers dying in the desert, nor for the Iraqi mothers searching for their children in the flames, nor for the countless others who need the blessings of Providence. I know I feel uneasy about the narrowness of the resolution. However, I want to urge my colleagues to read and take seriously the entire resolution. I especially urge them to read the section which says: ``Whereas through prayer, fasting, and self-reflection, we may better recognize our own faults and shortcomings and submit to the wisdom and love of God in order that we may have guidance and strength in those daily actions and decisions we must take;'' I urge my colleagues to take seriously the admonishment to remember that we, as individuals and as a nation, have faults and shortcomings. We are not, as individuals or as a nation, lords of this earth. We must do our best with imperfect knowledge and imperfect wisdom, never assuming we act on God's behalf. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to recall I Corinthians, 13:11-12: ``For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known.''

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, as the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld war has begun, we must now turn our attention to the reconstruction. As we discuss the budget today, we must keep some facts in mind. In a country where 60 percent of the people are entirely dependent on the Oil-for-Food Program run by the United Nations, which was ended 2 days ago, we are preparing to spend $12 billion a month bombing and $65 million for food, water, sanitation, shelter and health. We have accepted full responsibility for the people of Iraq as of this day. We did the same for Afghanistan. We promised back in October of 2001, Bush and Blair said the conflict will not end, we will not walk away as the outside world has done before. The fact is we spent $6.5 billion bombing Afghanistan, and $300 million was all we would commit for the first year. Mr. Karzai was in this country the other day begging for aid. He got $50 million, and we told him $35 million has to go to build a hospital. I will include in the Record an article by George Monbiot. A Scar on the Conscience of the World left behind to starve--a humanitarian disaster is engulfing Africa as cash is poured into the war with Iraq and its aftermath (By George Monbiot) There is surely no more obvious symptom of the corruption of western politics than the disproportion between the money available for sustaining life and the money available for terminating it. We could, I think, expect that, if they were asked to vote on the matter, most of the citizens of the rich world would demand that their governments spend as much on humanitarian aid as they spend on developing new means of killing people. But the military-industrial complex is a beast which becomes both fiercer and greedier the more it is fed. As the United States prepares to spend some $12 billion a month on bombing the Iraqis, it has so far offered only $65 million to provide them with food, water, sanitation, shelter and treatment for the injuries they are likely to receive. A confidential U.N. contingency plan for Iraq, which was leaked in January, suggests that the war could expose around one million children to ``risk of death from malnutrition.'' It warns that ``the collapse of essential services in Iraq could lead to a humanitarian emergency of proportions well beyond the capacity of U.N. agencies and other aid organizations.'' Around 60 percent of the population is entirely dependent on the oil for food programme, administered by the Iraqi government. This scheme was suspended by the U.N. yesterday, leaving the Iraqis reliant on foreign aid. The money pledged so far is enough to sustain the Iraqies for less than a fortnight. It is hard to believe, however, that the U.S. Government will leave them to starve once it has captured their country. For the weeks or months during which Iraq dominates the news, the U.S. will be obliged to defend them from the most immediate impacts of the institutional collapse its war will cause. Afterwards, like the people of Afghanistan, the Iraqis will be first forgotten by the media and then deserted by those who promised to support them. But even before the first troops cross the border, the impending war has caused a global humanitarian crisis. As donor countries set aside their aid budgets to save both themselves and the United States from embarrassment under the camera lights in Baghdad, they have all but ceased to provide money to other nations. The world, as a result, could soon be confronted by a humanitarian funding crisis graver than any since the end of the Second World War. Every year, in November, the U.N. agencies which deal with disasters launch what they call a ``consolidated appeal'' for each of the countries suffering a ``complex emergency''. They expect to receive the money they request by May of the following year. The payments and promises they have extracted so far chart the collapse of international concern for the people of almost every nation except Iraq. In Eritrea, for example, the drought is so severe that the water table has fallen by ten metres. Most of the nation's crops have failed and grain prices have doubled. Seventy percent of its 3.3 million people are now classified as vulnerable to famine. The United Nations has asked the rich countries for $163 million to help them. It has received $4 million, or 2.5 percent of the money it requested. Burundi, where almost one-sixth of the inhabitants have been forced out of their homes by conflict and natural disasters, and which is now officially listed as the third poorest nation on earth, has received 3 percent of its U.N. request. Liberia, where rebels have rendered much of the western part of the country uninhabitable, forcing some 500,000 people out of their homes, has been given 1.2 percent; Sierra Leone, where lassa fever is now rampaging through the refugee camps, has received 1 percent; and Guinea, which has recently taken 82,000 refugees from Cote d'Ivoire, 0.4 percent. Somalia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo have all received less than 6 percent. Much of the money for these invisible countries has come from donor nations with relatively small economies, such as Sweden, Norway, Canada and Ireland. ``The state of Africa'', Tony Blair told his party conference in October 2001, ``is a scar on the conscience of the world, but if the world focused on it, we could heal it''. Well, let it now be a scar on the conscience of Tony Blair. As a result of this unprecedented failure by the rich nations to cough up, the people of the forgotten countries will, very soon, begin to starve to death. The U.N. has warned that ``a break in supplies'' to Eritrea ``is now inevitable''. The World Food Programs has started feeding fewer people there, but will run out of food within two months. In Burundi it can, it says, continue feeding people ``for another four weeks''. Beans will run out in Liberia this month; cereals in May. One hundred thousand refugees in Guinea could find themselves without food by August. Yet neither of the two governments which are about to launch a ``humanitarian war'' appear to be concerned by the impending humanitarian catastrophes in the world's poorest nations. The aid crisis is now so serious that it is restricting disaster relief even in nations which are considered by the major powers to be geopolitically important. The U.N. agencies have so far received just 2.9 percent of their request for Palestine, and 8.4 percent of the money they need in Afghanistan. The latter figure is, in light of the repeated promises made by the nations prosecuting the war there, extraordinary. ``To the Afghan people we make this commitment,'' Blair pledged during the same speech in October 2001. ``The conflict will not be the end. We will not walk away, as the outside world has done so many times before.'' Three months later, the U.N. estimated that Afghanistan would need at least $10 billion for reconstruction over the following five years. The U.S., which had just spent $4.5 billion on bombing the country, offered $300 million for the first year and refused to make any commitment for subsequent years. This year, George Bush ``forgot'' to produce an aid budget for Afghanistan, until he was forced to provide another $300 million by Congress. The government, which has an annual budget of just $460 million--or around half of what the U.S., still spends every month on chasing remnants of Al qaeda through the mountains-- is effectively bankrupt. At the beginning of this month the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, flew to Washington to beg George Bush for more money. He was given $50 million, $35 million of which the U.S., insists is spent on the construction of a five-star hotel in Kabul. Karzai, in other words, has discovered what the people of Iraq will soon find out: generosity dries up when you are yesterday's news. If, somehow, you are still suffering from the delusion that this war is to be fought for the sake of the Iraqi people, I would invite you to consider the record of the prosecuting nations. We may believe that George Bush and Tony Blair have the interests of foreigners at heart only when they spend more on feeding them than they spend on killing them.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today as a Member of this body who was privileged to serve my country as an officer in the United States Navy. In that roll as chief psychiatrist at the Long Beach Naval Station at the height of the Vietnam War, it was my duty to evaluate and treat seaman and Marines returning from combat. I saw their pain. I wish it to be clearly understood that I have the utmost respect and appreciation for the courage, tenacity, and dedication of those currently serving in Iraq and elsewhere. But, Mr. Speaker, war is not a partisan matter. The leadership should be ashamed of bringing this resolution to the floor. Everyone here wants to support an honest and straightforward resolution to support our troops. Do not give us a disingenuous and deceptive resolution that confuses the issue by asking us to endorse the Bush doctrine that sent our troops to war. I for one will not be forced to praise the President's reckless decisions when what I want to do is praise the troops. I cannot endorse the administration's policy of unilateral military action without international sanctions. This war of choice undermines the international order and endangers our Republic.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me the time. When the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) heard I was coming over here, he said, are you bringing your walnut shells? Are we playing the shell game again over here? I said, no, I have got a new thing that came from the White House. It is a rubber stamp. It says ``official rubber stamp.'' I approve of everything George Bush does. Now that is what we have on here on the floor. You are not henchmen. You are just a rubber-stamp bunch. What is awesome about this day is we are going to war. Maybe that message we just got in here was the war message, I do not know, from the President, but Iraq is a country where 60 percent of the people get their food through the Oil-for-Food Program. We have now told the United Nations take their people out, there is no longer any way to feed 60 percent of the 24 million people in Iraq. They are your responsibility now. You have taken that on by saying, we are going to bring you democracy. Democracy is a pretty empty thing if you have got an empty stomach. So you are going to have to come up with some money to pay for the food program. There is not one thin dime in here. My colleagues know that the Lord Jesus Christ went up on the Sermon on the Mount there, and he gave this sermon and said that you should feed the poor. That is in Matthew, Matthew 26, I believe, and my colleagues all know that. All good Christians know that. We are all Christians in this country, are we not? We ought to have some money in here figuring out how we are going to pay for those people. It is not just the Iraqis that are going to be in trouble. In Eritrea, the world food program will be out in 2 months. Burundi has enough for another 4 weeks. The beans are gone in Liberia, and by the end of May they will have no cereal. There are 1,000 refugees in Guinea with nothing after August 10. This is a budget where we put 400- and I do not know how many billions of dollars into the defense budget, but there is not a thin dime in here for the people of Iraq. We are saying, oh, we are bringing in democracy, oh, yes. Those people in Afghanistan learned about our democracy. The first year we did not authorize anything. Then we coughed up $300 million after a while. The U.N. said they needed $10 billion. We put in $300 million. The next year we are about $270- or $290-, and we refused to make any long-term commitments. This is a country where we spent $4.5 billion bombing them, and we can only come up with $300 million a year to rebuild them. Tell me how the Sermon on the Mount figures into that. Do my colleagues think that is what Jesus would want us to be doing? The fact is that the President of Afghanistan came over here, Karzai. He went to the White House very shortly ago, last week or the week before, begging for money because he is broke. We gave him $50 million in OPEC money, but said, by the way, $35 million has to go to build a hotel.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take the 5 minutes of the gentlewoman from Indiana (Ms. Carson).

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I listened to the President's speech last night. I have no doubt that the President loves this country as much as I do, and he wants to do what is right. My problem with what he said is this: Many of the facts he cites and the things he believes about Iraq and about international law, and I hate to say this, are just plain wrong. There is a very good article in today's Washington Post buried on page 13 which is entitled ``Bush Clings to Dubious Allegations About Iraq,'' which I will submit for the Record. It reminds us of some things we have forgotten. For instance, does Iraq have nuclear weapons? Is it trying to make them? The President has said that Iraq tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes to use in machinery to enrich uranium. The International Atomic Energy Commission determined the tubes were for conventional weapons. The administration has pointed to 30 pounds of fissile material that was being smuggled into Iraq in a taxi from Turkey. It turned out to be less than 3 ounces of nonradioactive metal. In his State of the Union Address, the President relied on a report that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Niger, in Africa. That turned out to be a forgery, and it was a forgery that the CIA had warned the administration about. Last week the Vice President said Iraq has ``reconstituted nuclear weapons.'' Later in the same interview, he said that Iraq would get nuclear weapons, and it was only a matter of time. But the International Atomic Energy Commission, which has people on the ground in Iraq, or did until we told them to get out, says that there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities. Does Iraq have ballistic missiles that can strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Turkey, as the President said? U.N. arms inspectors found the missiles, determined they could not fly as far as those three countries, but they ordered them destroyed anyway. The Iraqis destroyed them, but the President said Hussein has ordered continued production, apparently based on nothing more than an electronic intercept where someone said they could build missiles in the future. Does Iraq have an extensive ongoing weapons program? Well, a graduate student 12 years ago wrote a paper that says so. It was plagiarized by the Blair government and passed on to Secretary Powell and cited in the United Nations as a news-breaking British intelligence document. When I weigh a plagiarized graduate school paper against the U.N. inspector's report, my inclination is to go with the United Nations report. But this administration sticks with the plagiarized paper. The President also threw in some misconceptions about international law. He believes that various U.N. resolutions add up to enough authority to go to war. That is not true. When the President takes his oath, he agrees to follow the treaties in article 6, clause II: ``This Constitution and all treaties made shall be made under the authority of the United States and shall be the supreme law of the land.'' When we go to war in Iraq, we are breaking that law. Now I hope the President, who still has 2 days to do some thinking, will consider drawing back from the brink. Mr. Speaker, I listened to the President's speech last night. I have no doubt that the President loves this country as much as I do, and wants to do what is right. My problem with what he said is simply this: many of the facts he cites and the things he believes about Iraq and about international law are--and I hate to say this--just wrong. There is a good article in the Washington Post today called ``Bush Clings to Dubious Allegations About Iraq,'' which I will submit for the Record. It reminds us of some things we have forgotten. Does Iraq have nuclear weapons? Is it trying to make them? The President has said that Iraq tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes to use in machinery to enrich uranium. The International Atomic Energy Commission determined that the tubes were for conventional weapons. The Administration has pointed to 30 pounds of ``fissile material'' that was being smuggled into Iraq in a taxi from Turkey. It turned out to be less than 3 ounces of nonradioactive metal. In his State of the Union Address, the President relied on a report that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Niger that turned out to be a forgery, and a forgery that the CIA had warned the Administration about. Last weekend, on Meet the Press, Vice President Cheney said Iraq has ``reconstituted nuclear weapons.'' Later in the same interview, he said Iraq would get nuclear weapons and it was ``only a matter of time.'' But the International Atomic Energy Commission which has people on the ground in Iraq--or did until we told them they should get out--says ``there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities.'' Does Iraq have ballistic missiles that can strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Turkey, as the President said? U.N. arms inspectors found the missiles, determined that they couldn't fly as far as those three countries, but ordered them destroyed. The Iraqis destroyed them, but the President says Hussein has ordered their continued production--apparently based on nothing more than an electronic intercept where someone says they could build missiles again in the future. Does Iraq have an extensive, on-going weapons program? Well, a graduate student wrote a paper that says so and it was plagiarized by the Blair government, and passed on to Secretary Powell and cited as a newsbreaking British intelligence document. When I weigh a plagiarized grad school paper against the U.N. inspector's report, my inclination is to go with the U.N. inspector's report--but this administration sticks with the plagiarized paper. The President also threw in some misconceptions about international law in his speech last night. He believes that various U.N. Resolutions add up to enough authority for the U.S. to launch an air and ground invasion of Iraq. This is not true. When we joined the U.N., we signed a treaty. The treaty says a member state can attack another country under two conditions--when attacked or in imminent danger of attack or when an attack is authorized by the Security Council. The President said last week that we were going to the Security Council for authority and we'd have a vote ``no matter what the Whip count is.'' Well, we didn't. We didn't because we were going to lose. Mr. Bush came up here to the Capitol steps on January 20, 2001 and said, ``I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'' That's the Oath of Office, friends. The Constitution he pledged to uphold says, Article 6, Clause 2: ``This Constitution . . . and all Treaties made, or which shall be made under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land.'' Treaties are the Supreme Law of the Land, on a par with the Constitution. The Constitution says so. We aren't supposed to pick and choose. We've never before in the history of the United States invaded another country without some kind of immediate provocation. But from now on, under the Bush Doctrine, we're going to invade when we think it's a good idea whether the Security Council agrees or not. This is a dangerous course--and it's especially dangerous when the information used to decide whom to invade is so very, very bad. Mr. Speaker, there is still time for the President to pull back from this course of action, to re-examine the so-called ``facts'' he's relying on and to find another path. Let us pray that he does. [From the Washington Post, Mar. 18, 2003] Bush Clings to Dubious Allegations About Iraq (By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank) As the Bush administration prepares to attack Iraq this week, it is doing so on the basis of a number of allegations against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that have been challenged--and in some cases disproved--by the United Nations, European governments and even U.S. intelligence reports. For months, President Bush and his top lieutenants have produced a long list of Iraqi offenses, culminating Sunday with Vice President Cheney's assertion that Iraq has ``reconstituted nuclear weapons.'' Previously, administration officials have tied Hussein to al Qaeda, to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and to an aggressive production of biological and chemical weapons. Bush reiterated many of these charges in his address to the nation last night. But these assertions are hotly disputed. Some of the administration's evidence--such as Bush's assertion that Iraq sought to purchase uranium--has been refuted by subsequent discoveries. Other claims have been questioned, though their validity can be known only after U.S. forces occupy Iraq. In outlining his case for war on Sunday, Cheney focused on how much more damage al Qaeda could have done on Sept. 11 ``if they'd had a nuclear weapon and detonated it in the middle of one of our cities, or if they had unleashed . . . biological weapons of some kind, smallpox or anthrax.'' He then tied that to evidence found in Afghanistan of how al Qaeda leaders ``have done everything they could to acquire those capabilities over the years.'' But in October CIA Director George J. Tenet told Congress that Hussein would not give such weapons to terrorists unless he decided helping ``terrorists in conducting a WMD [weapons of mass destruction] attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.'' In his appearance Sunday, on NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' the vice president argued that ``we believe [Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.'' But Cheney contradicted that assertion moments later, saying it was ``only a matter of time before he acquires nuclear weapons.'' Both assertions were contradicted earlier by Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who reported that ``there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities.'' ElBaradei also contradicted Bush and other officials who argued that Iraq had tried to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes to use in centrifuges for uranium enrichment. The IAEA determined that Iraq did not plan to use imported aluminum tubes for enriching uranium and generating nuclear weapons. ElBaradei argued that the tubes were for conventional weapons and ``it was highly unlikely'' that the tubes could have been used to produce nuclear material. Cheney on Sunday said ElBaradei was ``wrong'' about Iraq's nuclear program and questioned the IAEA's credibility. Earlier this month, ElBaradei said information about Iraq efforts to buy uranium were based on fabricated documents. Further investigation has found that top CIA officials had significant doubts about the veracity of the evidence, linking Iraq to efforts to purchase uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger, but the information ended up as fact in Bush's State of the Union address. In another embarrassing episode for the administration, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell cited evidence about Iraq's weapons efforts that originally appeared in a British intelligence document. But it later emerged that the British report's evidence was based in part on academic papers and trade publications. Sometimes information offered by Bush and his top officials is questioned by administration aides. In his March 6 news conference, Bush dismissed Iraq's destruction of its Al Samoud-2 missiles, saying they were being dismantled ``even as [Hussein] has ordered the continued production of the very same type of missiles.'' But the only intelligence was electronic intercepts that had individuals talking about being able to build missiles in the future, according to a senior intelligence analyst. Last month, Bush spoke about a liberated Iraq showing ``the power of freedom to transform that vital region'' and said ``a new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region.'' But a classified State Department report put together by the department's intelligence and research staff and delivered to Powell the same day as Bush's speech questioned that theory, arguing that history runs counter to it. In his first major speech solely on the Iraqi threat, has October, Bush said, ``Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles--far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other nations--in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work.'' Inspectors have found that the Al Samoud-2 missiles can travel less than 200 miles--not far enough to hit the targets Bush named. Iraq has not accounted for 14 medium-range Scud missiles from the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but the administration has not presented any evidence that they still exist.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take the time allocated to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, as we inch closer to Mr. Bush's unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Iraq, I come to the floor to talk about an issue that I think the American people should be aware of and Members of House should be very concerned about, and that is the type of news coverage they get about this war. I see in today's Roll Call that the Republicans are setting up a spin room that will be briefings from the White House on a regular basis, but it is only on one side. It is all being coordinated through the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox). Now, in addition to that the question is then about reporters, and there are going to be two kinds of reporters in this war. The first are the embedded reporters. Those are the American reporters who are brought in and put in military uniforms and put in units of the military. They will be under constant censorship by the leadership of the unit that they are with. They have to sign an agreement to that effect. It is called the Coalition Forces Land Component Ground Rules Agreement, and that means they cannot write anything that the commander of that unit does not say is all right to go out. Now it is pretty clear that the Secretary of War, Mr. Rumsfeld, is trying to deal with the problems of the Vietnam War. The press played an enormous role in stopping that war by reporting what is going on over there. Had there not been free press, there is no telling how long it might have gone on because the official reports were all bogus and we now know it. But, in the last couple of wars we have controlled the press, and this is the real best control I have ever seen. There is a second kind of reporter, and that is the unembedded reporter, the international reporters. There is an article in today's paper from the Irish radio, an interview with a woman by the name of Kate Adie, who is the chief news correspondent for the BBC. She said when asked if there were any consequences of fatal actions, the Pentagon officers said we do not care. They have been warned, stay out of there. She says, ``I am enormously pessimistic of the chance of decent, on the spot reporting as the war occurs.'' Another man on the same program, Phillip Knightley, who is a war historian, said, The Pentagon has also threatened they ``may find it necessary to bomb areas in which war correspondents are attempting to report from Iraq.'' Now, Miss Adie was told the Americans, and I have been talking to the Pentagon, their attitude is ``entirely hostile to the free spread of the information.'' I have been told by a senior officer in the Pentagon that if uplinks, that is television and electronic links, that is the television signals, were detected by any planes, the military would fire on them, even if they were journalists, she said. And the man said, Who cares? Well, the fact is those smart bombs, they tell us a lot but they cannot tell the difference between a radio link, a cell telephone or a radar. They are going to do everything they can to stamp out any kind of information about this war that they do not want to have to have processed. Now the American people are being taken into a war which is, we are going to be told it is going to be short and quick and sweet, and we were told that about the last war. We were told that only 147 people died in Iraq. But the fact is that 10,000 people have died since, and there are 221,000 claims of disability in the Veterans Administration due to depleted uranium and other toxins that were experienced by our troops. That was not reported at the time. It was not reported now. You have to go to the foreign press. I would say to all Americans, you should be watching the BBC. Read the French papers, the German papers, any other paper besides the United States. The reporters in the White House are lap dogs to the White House. They stood up there in a press conference the other day and watched the President of the United States with a script on the podium saying, I will call on Joe. Joe. I will call on Sally. Sally. He knew what the questions were that they were going to ask and he took exactly what he wanted. He would not take any question that was off his list. That is what the American people are supposed to make a decision about. You cannot have a democracy when the people are ignorant. They have to have information, and this administration is determined not to tell people what is going on. America better wake up quickly. [From GuluFuture.com, Mar. 10, 2003] Pentagon Threatens To Kill Independent Reporters in Iraq (By Fintan Dunne) The Pentagon has threatened to fire on the satellite uplink positions of independent journalists in Iraq, according to veteran BBC war correspondent, Kate Adie. In an interview with Irish radio, Ms. Adie said that questioned about the consequences of such potentially fatal actions, a senior Pentagon officer had said: ``Who cares. . . . They've been warned.'' According to Ms. Adie, who twelve years ago covered the last Gulf War, the Pentagon attitude is: ``entirely hostile to the free spread of information.'' ``I am enormously pessimistic of the chance of decent on- the-spot reporting, as the war occurs,'' she told Irish national broadcaster, Tom McGurk on the RTE1 Radio ``Sunday Show.'' Ms. Adie made the startling revelations during a discussion of media freedom issues in the likely upcoming war in Iraq. She also warned that the Pentagon is vetting journalists according to their stance on the war, and intends to take control of US journalists' satellite equipment--in order to control access to the airwaves. Another guest on the show, war author Phillip Knightley, reported that the Pentagon has also threatened they: ``may find it necessary to bomb areas in which war correspondents are attempting to report from the Iraqi side.'' Audio Transcript follows below: Tom McGurk: ``Now, Kate Adie, you join us from the BBC in London. Thank you very much for going to all this trouble on a Sunday morning to come and join us. I suppose you are watching with a mixture of emotions this war beginning to happen, because you are not going to be covering it.'' Kate Adie: ``Oh I will be. And what actually appalls me is the difference between twelve years ago and now. I've seen a complete erosion of any kind of acknowledgment that reporters should be able to report as they witness.'' ``The Americans . . . and I've been talking to the Pentagon . . . take the attitude which is entirely hostile to the free spread of information.'' ``I was told by a senior officer in the Pentagon, that if uplinks--that is the television signals out of . . . Bhagdad, for example--were detected by any planes . . . electronic media . . . mediums, of the military above Bhagdad . . . they'd be fired down on. Even if they were journalists . . . Who cares! `said . . . [inaudible].'' Tom McGurk: ``. . . Kate . . . sorry Kate . . . just to underline that. Sorry to interrupt you. Just to explain for our listeners. Uplinks is where you have your own satellite telephone method of distributing information.'' Kate Adie: ``The telephones and the television signals.'' Tom McGurk: ``And they would be fired on?'' Kate Adie: ``Yes. They would be `targeted down,' said the officer.'' Tom McGurk: ``Extraordinary!'' Kate Adie: ``Shameless!'' ``He said . . . `Well . . . they know this . . . they've been warned.' '' ``This is threatening freedom of information, before you even get to a war.'' ``The second thing is there was a massive news blackout imposed.'' ``In the last Gulf war, where I was one of the pool correspondents with the British Army. We effectively had very, very light touch when it came to any kind of censorship.'' ``We were told that anything which was going to endanger troops lives which we understood we shouldn't broadcast. But other than that, we were relatively free.'' ``Unlike our American colleagues, who immediately left their pool, after about 48 hours, having just had enough of it.'' ``And this time the Americans are: a) Asking journalists who go with them, whether they are . . . have feelings against the war. And therefore if you have views that are skeptical, then you are not to be acceptable.'' ``Secondly, they are intending to take control of the Americans technical equipment . . . those uplinks and satellite phones I was talking about. And control access to the airwaves.'' ``And then on top of everything else, there is now a blackout (which was imposed, during the last war, at the beginning of the war), . . . ordered by one Mr. Dick Cheney, who is in charge of this.'' ``I am enormously pessimistic of the chance of decent on- the-spot reporting, as the war occurs. You will get it later.''

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, this House reached a new level of buffoonery yesterday when one of the Members here used his authority to require vendors to rename French toast and that famous Belgian delicacy, French fries, saying this would ``show support for the American troops protecting freedom abroad.'' Now, Mr. Speaker, having been a ``troop,'' I do not think many people are going to have their morale raised much by us calling it ``freedom toast.'' President Chirac's efforts to find a way to disarm Saddam without getting American troops killed is not an act of effrontery or hatred toward the United States. I could recite a whole long litany of French contributions to our military goals, from providing the majority of troops at Yorktown, to voting with us more than 98 percent of the time in the Security Council, and we all know that France has been our longest and strongest ally. We could take that picture down over there of Mr. Lafayette. He fought at Yorktown. Why not really be silly and make ourselves laughingstocks? Mr. Speaker, let us stop putting this kind of silliness out and demeaning our relationship with the French.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I come to the House floor tonight to talk about an issue which I think is of grave concern to this country. I recently read an article published in the Sydney, Australia, Morning Herald entitled ``Foundations Are in Place for Martial Law in the United States.'' The author is a man named Ritt Goldstein, an investigative reporter for the Herald, and he said that recent pronouncements from the Bush administration and national security initiatives put in place in the Reagan era could see internment camps and martial law in the United States. When President Ronald Reagan was considering invading Nicaragua, he issued a series of executive orders which provided FEMA with broad powers in the event of a crisis, such as the violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition against a U.S. military invasion abroad. They were never used. But with the looming possibility of a U.S. invasion of Iraq, recent pronouncements by President Bush's domestic security chief, Tom Ridge, and an official with the Civil Rights Commission should fire concerns that these powers could be employed or a de facto drift into their deployment in the future. On the 20th of July, the Detroit Free Press ran a story entitled ``Arabs in U.S. Could Be Held, Official Warns.'' The story referred to a member of the Civil Rights Commission who foresaw the possibility of internment camps for Arab Americans. FEMA has practiced for such an occasion. FEMA, whose main role is disaster response, is also responsible for handling U.S. domestic unrest. From 1982 to 1984, Colonel Oliver North assisted FEMA in drafting its civil defense preparations. Details of those plans emerged during the 1987 Iran-Contra scandal. They included executive orders providing for suspension of the Constitution, the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the President and FEMA. A Miami Herald article on the 5th of July, 1987, reported that the former FEMA director's, Louis Guiffrida's, deputy, John Brinkerhoff, handled the martial law portion of the planning. The planning was said to be similar to one Mr. Guiffrida had developed earlier to combat a national uprising by black militants. It provided for the detention of at least 21 million American Negroes in assembly centers or relocation camps. Today, Mr. Brinkerhoff is with the highly influential Anser Institute for Homeland Security. Following a request by the Pentagon in January that the U.S. military be allowed the option of deploying troops on American streets, the institute in February published a paper by Mr. Brinkerhoff arguing the legality of this. He alleged that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which has long been accepted as prohibiting such deployments, had simply been misunderstood and misapplied. The preface to the article also provided the revelation that the national plan he had worked on under Mr. Guiffrida was approved by Reagan and actions were taken to implement it. By April, the U.S. military had created a Northern Command to aid homeland security. Reuters reported that the command is mainly expected to play a supporting role to local authorities. However, Mr. Ridge, the Director of Homeland Security, has just advocated a review of U.S. law regarding the use of military for law enforcement duties. Disturbingly, and it just really should disturb people, the full facts and contents of Mr. Reagan's national plan remain uncertain. This is in part because President Bush took the unusual step of sealing the Reagan Presidential papers last November. However, many of the key figures of the Reagan era are part of the present administration, including John Poindexter, to whom Oliver North later reported. At the time of the Reagan initiatives, the then-Attorney General, William French Smith, a Republican, wrote to the National Security Adviser, Robert McFarlane: ``I believe that the role assigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the revised executive order exceeds its proper function as a coordinating agency for emergency preparedness. This department and others have repeatedly raised serious policy and legal objections to an emergency czar role for FEMA.'' Criticism of the Bush administration's response to September 11 echoes Mr. Smith's warning. On June 7 of last year, the former Presidential counsel, John Dean, spoke of America sliding into a, quote, ``constitutional dictatorship,'' close quote, and martial law. The reason I raise this issue is that I come from a State where in 1941 under executive order by the President, 9661, we rounded up all the Japanese Americans in this country and put them in concentration camps. We have set in place the mechanism to do that again and we must not, we cannot sacrifice the Constitution in this rush to war that we are doing in Iraq.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I appreciate the opportunity to talk here today on an issue which I think is very timely and very important. Today I dropped in H.R. 1200, which is a bill that I have dropped in for 12 years, providing universal health care insurance for the entire country. We are all one family. We are not this group or that group or another group or whatever. We are all together in this. We ought to have a plan that covers everybody, no matter where you live, no matter what color your skin is, no matter what ethnic background you come from, what kind of money you have or anything. It should be a system that covers everyone. Now, today I just took this out of my wallet. I am covered because I have got this piece of plastic in my wallet. If I get in an accident or get sick and they haul me in the emergency room, they will find out I got this piece of plastic and I am covered. I can go for preventive care. I can go for all kinds of things. But if you do not have this piece of plastic, you will have to wait until you are really sick, because you cannot afford to pay for it; and you go into the emergency room, you get health care, but in the most inefficient way possible and the most inhumane way possible, at the end, when you should have been having preventive care before. Now, this country, for reasons which totally escape me, cannot accept that it is a right for everyone to have health coverage. In Germany, we say, you know, what could the Germans know? In 1883 they put in a universal health care system. If you go to work tomorrow in Germany, you will have insurance tomorrow. They take in Turkish workers, they take in Kurds, they take in Bosnians. All these people come into their country, and they give them health care coverage from the very first day. The United States has lots of people who come into this country to work. They come here to pick our vegetables, to work in the fields, to do the hard labor in this country. The fact is that of the 42 million people in this country who do not have insurance, 72 percent of them work full-time. They are not lazy. They are pulling their weight. They are doing what you have to do in a society to feed their family. But they do not have health insurance, and it is wrong. I think that the members of the Hispanic Caucus are absolutely correct in bringing this up, that everybody in this country should be covered. The fact that Hispanics are in fact the least insured in this country is a travesty. If they were not doing the work they do in this country, we could not have the standard of living we have.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I am here to talk on behalf of three doctors and myself. I was a physician during the Vietnam War. I was in Long Beach. I saw the troops coming back from the Vietnam War, and I saw what the war did to them. I also have been in government since then and have seen how our government for many years denied that Agent Orange had any effect whatsoever on the troops. In 1984 we settled a claim for all of the problems created by Agent Orange, which we finally admitted. Now we have a case before the Supreme Court at this very time where they are trying to reopen that claim on behalf of people who are suffering even 40 years after the war. It is for that reason that I raise the issue today of depleted uranium in Iraq. I was there. I was in Iraq in 1991, and I was there again this year; and the evidence is overwhelming of the impact of what Iraq has suffered from depleted uranium and what we, the United States, are about to suffer. Dr. Al-Ali said that before the Gulf War they had only three or four deaths a month from cancer. Now it is 30 to 35 patients dying every month, and that is just in his department. That is a 12-fold increase, 1,200 percent increase in cancer mortality. Studies indicate that 40 to 48 percent of the population in that area will get cancer in 5 years. That is almost half the population. A woman doctor, Dr. Ginan Hassen, said, ``I studied what happened in Hiroshima. It is almost exactly the same here. We have an increased percentage of congenital malformaties, an increase of malignancy, leukemia, brain tumors, and the rest.'' Under the economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council, now in its 14th year, Iraq is denied the equipment and expertise to decontaminate its battlefields from the 1991 Gulf War. These are two Iraqi doctors talking. Let me quote an American doctor, Dr. Doug Rokke, who was appointed by Norman Schwarzkopf to go in as a part of the decontamination team and clean up what we did. We dumped 300 tons of munitions with depleted uranium in this area that he was sent in to clean up. He says: ``I have 5,000 times the recommended level of radiation in my body. Most of my team are now dead.'' Eighteen out of 24 people, American soldiers sent in to clean that up, are now dead. Dr. Rokke says, ``We face an issue to be confronted by the people in the West, those with a sense of right and wrong.'' First, a decision by the United States and Britain to use weapons of mass destruction, depleted uranium. When a tank fired a shell, each round contains 4,500 grams of solid uranium. What happened to the Gulf was a form of nuclear war. That was 1991. We are about to do it again. People are talking about 3,000 missiles into Baghdad in the first day and 3,000 on the second day, all with depleted uranium on the point. Why is that used? Because it is so penetrating, when it explodes, it creates a white dust, uranium oxide, and people walk around, it gets in their lungs and reproductive organs. Children died. That is where those figures come from for the children. That is why we have so many malformations at birth among Iraqi women. It is to the point today where Iraqi women say, Is my child normal? Mr. Speaker, we did that once to them, and we are about to do it again. We are about to do it again, and we are about to do to our own troops, hundreds of thousands of them, what we did to Doug Rokke. Dr. Rokke marched in there and did his duty. I am here talking for the veterans of our country and for the women and men who are on the line for us out there. I do not want them sent into that. We are going to march troops right through the very place where this happened to the Iraqi people. Will our government admit what they are doing? No. They will not talk about what is going on with depleted uranium. Here is the issue. The Secretary of VA, Mr. Principi, remember the Bush administration, writes a letter to the Department of Defense and says please do preservice evaluations on all of the men and women so we can look at, when it is over, what the difference is. How can we send 300,000 American people into war that kills Iraqis left, right and center with impugnity? This is an unjust war. There are many reasons to be against this war; but this reason, the soldiers and Marines and sailors of the United States are the major reason we should not be doing it. We are exposing our own people to something that we will not admit we are doing.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney).

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak about the need to address domestic violence against women within the context of our welfare system. One in every three welfare recipients has experienced domestic violence in the 12 months prior to receiving welfare assistance. Making women choose between financial security and physical safety is appalling. The provisions in the bill which urge marriage and have programs to get people married, which will encourage some women either to stay in a abusive relationship or marry an abuser, is not the way welfare should be moving for economic security. This is no way to promote that. Women have the right to financial stability and physical safety for themselves and for their children. Welfare's means for promoting success and economic stability should come through education and training and other responsible ways. Education is the number one predictor of future opportunities in the work force. We should be putting our limited and valuable resources toward these proven vehicles of helping women, instead of throwing it away on unproved programs to urge people to get married. There is no question we are going to put more women in harm's way with those kinds of programs.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I was unable to vote on yesterday's suspension bills. Had I been capable of voting, I would have voted in support of: H.R. 46--Honoring the life of Al Hirschfeld. H.R. 40--Permitting the use of the rotunda of the Capital for a ceremony in remembrance of victims of the Holocaust.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I commend this speech by the leader of the liberal party in the House of Lords. Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I too thank the Deputy Leader of the House for the very forceful, although not at all untypical, way in which she addressed the House. We on these Benches share completely the objective of the disarmament of Iraq. There is no question about that. I want to remind the noble Baroness of the second part of Resolution 1441. It states that Iraq should have, ``a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Council'', and that it has been accordingly decided, ``to set up an enhanced inspection regime with the aim of bringing to full and verified completion the disarmament process''. The difference between these Benches, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, is straightforwardly that we believe that the present draft resolutions pre-empt that process, that it is not yet completed, and that there is still an opportunity to avoid war. Let me say very clearly, in case there is any misunderstanding, that we believe that we, as powerfully as any other part of this House, have an obligation to our troops to make absolutely certain that men and women are not put into war, risking their lives, unless it can be shown to be absolutely necessary to do so. It is to that that I intend to address my remarks. The first question is whether we are convinced that Iraq is an imminent and present threat. There is no question but that it could be a potential threat, although I must dispute briefly with the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford. Not only the CIA in the United States but Ministers in this House have on more than one recent occasion admitted that there is no clear evidence to link Al'Qaeda to the Government of Iraq, much as we might find things easier if that were so. That must be stated very explicitly, because repeating a misconception over and again does not turn that misconception into a truth. Therefore, I doubt whether we can show that Iraq is an imminent threat. If we are seeking imminent threat, I need only quote from a very senior colleague of mine who is the head of the security unit in the Belfer Center at Harvard University. Ash Carter is a former National Security Agency assistant secretary. He said: ``News reports late last week indicated that . . . North Korea is trucking the fuel rods away where they can neither be inspected nor entombed by an airstrike . . . as this loose nukes disaster unfolds and the options for dealing with it narrow, the world does nothing''. That is a much more imminent threat. Secondly, we are not convinced that containment has failed. I can quote from an authoritative source. These are the words of the Prime Minister himself in November 2000: ``We believe that the sanctions regime has effectively contained Saddam Hussein in the last 10 years. During this time he has not attacked his neighbours, nor used chemical weapons against his own people''.--[Official Report, Commons, 1/11/00; col. 511 W.] Nor has he done either in the past three years--since that statement. Another authoritative source said: ``Through a process of inspection and verified destruction, the UNSCOM inspectors have demolished more weapons capability than was destroyed by the allied forces during the Gulf war''.--[Official Report, Commons, 17/2/98; col. 900.] Those are the words of Robin Cook, then the Foreign Secretary. Even much more recently, it has been restated more than once that containment has proved more effective in destroying weapons of mass destruction than any war at any time in the past few years. The third issue is whether we believe that the peaceful options have been exhausted. Again, I quote from two unimpeachable sources. The first is the Congressional Research Service of the United States Congress, which said: ``In meetings with Blix and ElBaradei in Baghdad on February 8 and 9, 2003, Iraqi officials handed over documents on anthrax, VX, and missile programs . . . On February 10, Iraq notified the UN that it would permit overflights of American U-2, French Mirage, and Russian Antonov aircraft''. Let us add to that the report in the Independent today, which said: ``Mr. Blix said the details of the weapons''-- I have described when they were handed over to the inspectors--``were `positive steps which need to be explored further'. Asked if there was any indication by the Iraqis of `substantive progress or proactive co-operation' '', which are exactly the requirements mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, Mr Blix, a man of few words, replied, ``Yes''. That was only yesterday. We on these Benches are not persuaded that all peaceful options have been exhausted. We point, not to illusions or statements by Members on these Benches, but to clear and unimpeachable sources such as the Congressional Research Service and the chief inspector, Mr Blix himself. None of this would matter so much if the consequences of war were less serious than they are. I wish to say a few words about them. First, the Financial Times states: ``The coalition of the willing, sounds ever more like a coalition of the reluctant''. Huge pressures are being brought to bear, not least on moderate Muslim countries such as Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and others, to subscribe to being part of an alliance to destroy the Iraqi regime. Those countries have protested over and over again that they do not wish to be involved in the war. Let me give two examples. There was a great deal of controversy over Turkey because it was argued that it had been refused Patriot missiles as a result of a disagreeable coalition between France and Germany. It later emerged that Turkey had never asked for Patriot missiles or for any of the other equipment that was sent to it. Turkey had asked for consultation under Article 4 of the NATO treaty. It had not invoked Article 5, which is the article concerning mutual defense. Even now, Turkey is driving a colossally hard bargain. Members of the House will have seen that one part of the bargain is that Turkey should be allowed to bring 55,000 troops into northern Iraq--the Kurdish area, much of which is protected by a no-fly-zone--a situation which, at the very least, is likely to foment great anger and, at worst, could lead to civil war and the disintegration of Iraq. It has also--incidentally, almost--helped to destroy the real prospect of a united Cyprus entering the European Union some time in the next seven or eight years. The International Crisis Group--I declare an interest as a board member--has discovered that there is tremendous public concern about the possibility of a war against Iraq in the Middle East. In its report, it states: ``ICG interviews throughout the region, in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt and Algeria, indicate that there exists wide and deep scepticism about US motives''. That may be unfair, but it is a fact that we have to take into account when deciding whether the price of war is too high. It also emphasizes the importance of pursuing every other possible alternative. I need not add the special complication of the wretched situation in the Middle East, referred to in another place yesterday by that distinguished and brave Member of Parliament, Gerald Kaufman, as the daily almost casual slaughter of Palestinians by the IDF and the daily almost casual slaughter of Israelis by terrorists from the West Bank and Gaza. We cannot pretend that this is not a desperately serious complication. With great respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, she and I both know that the reason why the UN resolutions are mandatory on Iraq, and not mandatory on Israel, which has also broken many of them, is because the United States refuses to agree to their being made mandatory on Israel. I have the greatest respect for the Prime Minister. He has virtually ripped himself into pieces trying to hold the Administration in the United States to the UN process. He is the reason why George Bush went to the United Nations: I pay the Prime Minister great credit for that. But the distinction I have just drawn between Israel and Iraq shows all too clearly that it is not the Prime Minister who is in the driving seat. It is concern about who is in the driving seat that underlies much of the scepticism. I do not need to mention at length the possible humanitarian consequences of a war. That has been done effectively by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford. But they are extreme. One has only to consider the desperate plight with regard to food. According to a leaked UN document, 30 per cent of children under five will be at risk of death from malnutrition if the war lasts more than a week or so. There are also warnings about cholera and many other extreme diseases. The warnings come from a United Nations leaked document, called the ``Humanitarian Consequences of the War''. Before I come to my conclusion, I shall say in the words of a famous politician whom many Labour Members of this House will remember, ``You don't need to look at the crystal if you can read the book''. What is the book? The book concerns Afghanistan. I shall quote again from two sources, the first of which is The Times of 13 February, which states that ``large parts of the country are once more on the verge of anarchy''. An article by the senior fellow at the American Council on Foreign Relations--I declare an interest as a member of its international advisory council--states: ``Basic security and stability have still not been achieved''. Worst of all, when the President drew up his budget for 2004, he forgot to put even a penny for the reconstruction of Afghanistan into it. Paul Krugman, of the New York Times, states: ``The Bush team forgot about it. Embarrassed Congressional staff members had to write in $300 million to cover the lapse''. So much for Afghanistan, already largely forgotten, coming back to anarchy, and neglected by the international community. I conclude with two thoughts. First, there is clear evidence that the obsession with Iraq is drawing us away from what should be our first priority, which is to attack international terrorism. For that we need the widest possible support. I shall not go on quoting, but it was President Jimmy Carter who said a few days ago that the obsession with Iraq had essentially diverted the American Administration from concern about terrorism. There is more evidence that we are beginning to neglect the remnants--not dead remnants, but live ones--of Al'Qaeda in many other parts of the world. Finally, there is a fundamental thought, to which my colleague Lord Wallace of Saltaire will address himself. There is undoubtedly among European opinion, including the United Kingdom, more than 80 per cent opposition to a war without UN support and considerable opposition to a war even with UN support. That does not reflect anti-Americanism, except perhaps among a small minority. Many of us regard America as one of the most enterprising, imaginative, democratic and open societies in the world. What it reflects is concern with an Administration propelled to some extent by what I can only describe as a fundamentalist Christian and fundamentalist Jewish drive that is almost as powerful as fundamentalist Islam itself. The Administration has set aside the structures of the multilateral community by removing themselves from treaties and conventions, by refusing to sign the Kyoto agreement or agreeing to the biological weapons convention being resumed, and now by embarking on nuclear plans that threaten even the nuclear proliferation treaty. It is who is in the driving seat that frightens many of us; certainly not that great country the United States.