Jim McDermott

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the fact is that you have a calendar which says we will be here until 8 or 9 o'clock tonight, so there is plenty of time to make this small change, and any argument that we do not have time is simply a bogus argument. Now, the fact is that as my colleague from Maryland has said, this is unfinished business from before. I have tried two different ways and the majority is intent on killing any attempt to modify what they have agreed to with the Senate. Now, I guess from now on we will just wait for the Senate to tell us what we need to do because the House clearly has no power to ever confront the Senate and tell the Senate that they have made not quite the right bill. This is a historic moment. I do not ever remember being in the House of Representatives any place where they conceded to the Senate that whatever the Senate says is what we have to do. We could do this by 3 o'clock very easily and cover a million people. Now, for anybody to say that because they have already exhausted, because of that technicality on the 28th of December they should not get any more, I find that incredible that you would say that to somebody who is unemployed, that the law we wrote did not work so you do not get any money. Explain that to your kids when you are sitting there at the dinner table. We do not have any food, kids, because the law that the Congress wrote did not work right so I did not get a check this month. I paid for it, I paid into the benefits, and we do not get them.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, this is a really interesting bill because it really kind of lays it out cold-bloodedly. The President, or the White House, has had 2 million jobs lost since they came into office, and they do not care. When the White House announced their special interests for this session, they said we want homeland security, we want Federal judges and we want terrorism insurance. Not one single word about the economy. I come from a State where there is 7 percent unemployment. The Northwest is the highest in the country. And anybody who exhausts their benefits before January 1 gets nothing. Oh, excuse me. They get 5 weeks after the first of the year. That is all they get is 5 weeks. As the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) has already said, we have $25 billion sitting in a fund to deal with this, and you come out here with a 5-week plan. I mean Merry Christmas, folks. Are you going to send turkeys around at Thanksgiving also as part of this program? Why can you not ever admit that you fouled up the economy and the people you have put out of work you are unwilling to take care of when you have the money sitting there? It is sitting there. I cannot understand how you are going to go home to people and say, well, we are sorry, we will be back in on January 7 and we will pass something real quick; so do not worry, do not worry, do not worry. I mean you are saying at Christmas time to people you are not going to take care of them. Our unemployment in this country, we have gone up 25 percent in long- term unemployment in the last 6 months, and there is no question between now and February an estimated 1.8 million people are going to lose their unemployment insurance, and you are not doing anything for them, just a little tiny Band-Aid. And it is pretty clear where your priorities are. You are willing in the last bill to take off all the financial controls to spend on defense, to go $100 billion, $200 billion into debt in Iraq, but you will not give anything but 5 weeks of unemployment to the people who have lost their jobs in this mess you have created. I think that we will be back in January, we will all vote for this. We know it is inadequate, but that is what you are offering them, and we are not going to say no. We are not fools. But the fact is you are going to come back in here in January and you are going to hear the same speech from me because I am going to say to you why are you only taking it 3 months or you will go 6 months? You will not recognize what you have created here, and you have long-term unemployment that is going up in this country and you just cannot seem to face it. So we will vote on this inadequate piece.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. But you all understand where it is coming from, do you not? I mean it is not falling out of the sky. This is a concentrated effort, and what they wanted to do was they wanted to give all those taxes away so there would be no money to deal with social programs, and now it happens and they are suddenly afraid. They were fools before. They were saying, well, you can give it all away and we do not have to worry. We will just stiffen our spine and when the people come in here begging, we will send them away. Then they suddenly found out that the people coming in here were veterans. I mean we are going to war. We are going to create a whole bunch more veterans. Are we going to take care of them? Go to my veterans hospital and you will find out what they are doing right now. Or poor people, of course they do not count anyway. So never mind. Let them yell all they want. And education, well, what do we care about stooges? Let them pile on some more debt. This is a blank check to the executive branch to write and spend endlessly. And an unfortunate chairman of the committee has to come out here and defend this all by himself. No one will come here and speak with him. He is the only one. They put him out there and they said you are the chairman, you go carry this and just take the lumps, it will not make any difference because down at the White House we will write up some stuff and we will spend on war, we will spend the $200 billion going to war in Iraq over the next 10 years. That is no problem. We can find that anywhere. Let us see what else we can find. Oh, we have got to have that insurance for terrorism. Of course that will not cost anything. And in this bill that is coming up next they have got additional money for Medicare. Do my colleagues know what they did? They went down to CBO and they said CBO, do not score this, do not show it cost anything, so they can bring it out here and they can say it does not cost anything, CBO says there is no scoring. I mean this game is rigged, and you are watching this game be rigged right in front of your eyes. This will be when you come back and want to balance the budget and you look for some rules, you gave them away on whatever this is, the 15th of November. Vote for the recommittal.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I think that I want to caution my friends on the Democratic side do not get excited. You guys understand this President is in total control of this country, and he lied to us about taxes and now it is coming home to roost. Do not get exercised because you have got to save your voice. We are going to have 2 years of this stuff where they can do anything they want. This bill is simply giving them the keys to the hen house. The fox has now got it. He has got votes in the Senate, got votes in the House, and the President is going to send up stuff here and he does not have to balance any budget anymore. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, it is really nice that we can end this session with one more act from the Republican economic follies. I mean, this is the craziest piece of legislation I have ever seen, and this rule is an amazingly stupid rule. They bring a bill out here for equity for the veterans, right? Oh, well, now we are here, let us throw a little something on for the doctors. While we are here, let us throw a little something on for unemployment. We had extended hearings on this issue. Our committee went over and over again and heard about all the problems. Like heck we did; there were no hearings. They come out here with Band-Aids again, and everybody on this floor knows this bill is going to die. This is nonsense. It is not going to go over to the Senate and be accepted. But as my dear friend, the gentleman from Texas, said, they want to play the blame game. Now, unemployment is a serious issue. What they are doing in this bill is not going to fix the unemployment problem. I will give chapter and verse when we get on the substance. But the fact that they will not allow us to put any kind of amendments up here is the reason why this bill is no good, and it is what they have been doing for a whole year. They have known that the doctors were being taken around the corner and beaten up for 5 percent. They have known that for 9 months. They are not smart enough to put together something with the other side to get it through. Now here they are at the last day and saying, well, Thanksgiving is coming, Christmas is coming, send them another package; but they are not putting any stamps on it. It is never going to get through this place. That has got to stop. These are issues that affect Democrats and Republicans; it is not partisan. Doctors, rural hospitals are Democrat and they are Republican. As long as they try and fix the problem by coming out here and slapping one, two, three Band-Aids on to fix what they should have done, it will not work. The unemployment bill was badly written in the first place, and we begged them to come and do something about it. What do they do? Extend it for another 5 weeks. They say, well, another 5 weeks. The long-term unemployment in this country is going up dramatically. We ought to vote this rule down and write a decent one.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following article. (By Stimson Bullitt) How best can we defend our territory, our government and our lives from present threats? The big threat comes from the author of the most serious attack on us, al-Qaida, the network of cells scattered across much of the world. Rather than a conventional war against another nation, to defeat this enemy calls for police action against a criminal gang, and its members through an integrated program: Intelligence to track and discover, and action to prosecute, those who undertake and plan attacks on us. Second, restrict the most dreadful weapons. For this, we must cease our Lone Ranger approach, refusing to cooperate to limit creation and spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. As a step toward observance of a rule of law between nations, we should cease to refuse to join the International Criminal Court. Our expressed fear of being prosecuted recalls the Old Testament verse: ``The guilty flee when no man pursueth.'' It has been proposed that we shift our concentration to Iraq because its brutal and ruthless leadership is hostile to us and has a record of seeking to develop deadly weapons. The proposal is to remove both the leadership and the weapons and to do so by making war against that country, How does Iraq threaten us, and what price may we pay to remove the threat? Far off, and with no navy, Iraq cannot invade us. Nor does it have the only other means by which it directly could attack us: long-range planes or missiles. An ICBM silo can't be trundled around between hiding places and is easy to spot and to destroy. If Iraq were to undertake some, as soon as they were observed under construction, our forces should and would dispatch them like the proverbial ducks in a barrel. That's the place for preemptive strikes. Iraq could seek to attack us indirectly by assisting al- Qaida to smuggle weapons across our border. The most destructive means would be an atom bomb in a ship's hold, incinerating one of our port cities. However, like Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Algeria, Iraq has a Muslim population but a secular government, not a theocracy. By contrast, al-Qaida is composed of impassioned Islamist fanatics. Iraq's government may hesitate to entrust weapons to those whose dislike and distrust may turn them back against it. Rather than seeking such a weapon from Iraq's government, disinclined to furnish one even if it had one, a]-Qaida agents may be more likely to seek one from territory of the former Soviet Union, where countless and uncounted nukes are under the charge of lowpaid bureaucrats, many of whom are incompetent or criminal. Would our prospective gain from reducing or avoiding the foregoing modest risk exceed the price that a solo invasion would impose on us? Quantities of American soldiers' lives and taxpayers'dollars would depend on war's uncertainties, among which would be the weapons Iraq may have available to use against our invading troops. If its armed force is as strong as we are told it is, to overcome it will impose a heavy cost. Going alone would demonstrate such disagreement that would lead to refusals of the needed cooperative action for the long, long war on international terrorism. When we act without allies, where international law calls for some degree of consent among the leading nations, our disregard of such law impairs our influence, reduces our power. If we think we can protect ourselves from cells of zealots without the willing cooperation of governments where they are located, we are nuts. Prospective allies' unwillingness to commit combat troops to the endeavor would give us pause, raising doubt in reasonable minds. Are we really the only one right, and all others wrong? Left with the job of rebuilding a nation unfamiliar with democratic processes or government under law, we would risk the chaos that would set Iraq's neighbors at war, It would not stop al-Qaida's war on us but would intensify its energies. Terrorists are widespread. Iraq did not send Mohammed Atta or Timothy McVeigh, nor did it organize al- Qaida or the Aryan Nations. After Oklahoma City, we convicted two men. We did not attack Aryan Nations communities in northern Idaho or in Michigan. If England struck Boston, from which some of the IRA bombings in England have been financed, we would not approve. To assault a nation, whether Afghanistan, Iraq or another, fails to protect our country from terrorist attacks. And it kills an unnecessary number of people. Violating human morality reduces our claim to stand for civilized decency as a nation. Others should be killed only when necessary to defend our liberty or lives. By violating our duty of ``a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,'' in Jefferson's phrase, we terrify and offend other nations and thereby increase the numbers and passions of those who will aim terrorist attacks against us. Stimson Bullitt is a lawyer, developer of Harbor Steps in downtown Seattle, and former president of KING Broadcasting. He has written several books, including ``To Be A Politician.''

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, there is a saying that we must be careful what we ask for because we might get it. Today we have given the President what he asked for; and if he gets the same from the Senate, I think it is important as we leave to remind him of the weight of the power that we have given him, that is, to commit this country to war. As I listened to the debate today, I thought of a story I read in the notes of the Bishops Retreat at Blackstone, Virginia, on October 1. The priest, Christopher Morris, tells this story. He told about a general who lived in his parish, and he said, ``Nearly half of my congregation was made up of military families; so any opposition to the war in Vietnam seemed to be attacking those who had to fight it. When a series of Sunday evening sessions addressing this issue were announced, some of the service people in the congregation protested. We had arranged for members of the American field service to come and make the case against the war and a representative from the Pentagon to come and give the government's case for the war. But some felt this was unpatriotic and undermining our troops who were being sent into combat.'' The general and his wife attended our church, she being more active than he. He was the comptroller of the Army stationed at nearby Fort Monroe. I called and asked if I could go and see him and was invited to their house late one evening. The three of us sat together in the living room. He was a general who was loyal to the defense of his country and its government's policy. Somewhat to my surprise, he said to me, ``Everyone knows there is a division of opinion in this country and the church should not avoid the issue. If you're going to present the sides fairly, I think you should go ahead.'' Two years later when I had left Hampton and been appointed to do graduate study at Union Seminary, a call came to New York asking me if I would come down to Arlington Cemetery for the burial of the general's 18-year-old son. On behalf of a grateful Nation, the chaplain said, presenting the flag to his wife. ``Don't speak to me of a grateful Nation,'' she replied. ``This is not a grateful Nation. It is a confused Nation. My son loved nature and liked to climb mountains, and now he is dead in a war he never believed in and neither did I.'' I have never seen more agony in a person's face than I saw in the face of the general. I hope the President will understand that we are divided here. We were not all on one side. And those of us who voted against are as patriotic as those who voted for. The questions we raise are because we love our country, and I think that as we enter this period it is very important not to brand one side or the other as unpatriotic. Mr. Speaker, I add to the Record an article entitled ``Am I anti- American?'' by Arundhati Roy in the Guardian, September 27, 2002. She lays out the case for why we have the strength and the ability to raise questions about our democracy. It is important and it should not be considered un-American for anyone to raise these issues. [From the Guardian, Sept. 27, 2002] Am I Anti-American? (By Arundhati Roy) Recently, those who have criticized the actions of the US government myself included have been called ``anti- American''. Anti-Americanism is in the process of being consecrated into an ideology. The term is usually used by the American establishment to discredit and, not falsely--but shall we say inaccurately--define its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they're heard and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride. What does the term mean? That you're anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to free speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans? This sly conflation of America's music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the US government's foreign policy is a deliberate and extremely effective strategy. It's like a retreating army taking cover in a heavily populated city, hoping that the prospect of hitting civilian targets will deter enemy fire. There are many Americans who would be mortified to be associated with their government's policies. the most scholarly, scathing, incisive, hilarious critiques of the hypocrisy and the contradictions in US government policy come from American citizens. (Similarly, in India, not hundreds, but millions of us would be ashamed and offended, if we were in any way implicated with the present Indian government's fascist policies.) To call someone anti-American, indeed, to be anti-American, is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not good, you're evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists. Last year, like many others, I too made the mistake of scoffing at this post-September 11 rhetoric, dismissing it as foolish and arrogant. I've realized that it's not. It's actually a canny recruitment drive for a misconceived, dangerous war. Every day I'm taken aback at how many people believe that opposing the war in Afghanistan amounts to supporting terrorism. Now that the initial aim of the war-- capturing Osama bin Laden seems to have run into bad weather, the goalposts have been moved. It's being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas. We're being asked to believe that the US marines are actually on a feminist mission. (If so, will their next stop be America's military ally, Saudi Arabia?) Think of it this way: in India there are some pretty reprehensible social practices, against ``untouchables'', against Christians and Muslims, against women. Should they be bombed? Uppermost on everybody's mind, of course, particularly here in America, is the horror of what has come to be known as 9/ 11. Nearly 3,000 civilians lost their lives in that lethal terrorist strike. The grief is still deep. The rage still sharp. The tears have not dried. And a strange, deadly war is raging around the world. Yet, each person who has lost a loved one surely knows that no war, no act of revenge, will blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a brutal desecration of their memory. To fuel yet another war--this time against Iraq--by manipulating people's grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by corporations selling detergent or running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain it of meaning. We are seeing a pillaging of even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a state to do to its people. The US government says that Saddam Hussein is a war criminal, a cruel military despot who has committed genocide against his own people. That's a fairly accurate description of the man. In 1988, he razed hundreds of villages in northern Iraq and killed thousands of Kurds. Today, we know that that same year the US government provided him with $500m in subsidies to buy American farm products. The next year, after he had successfully completed his genocidal campaign, the US government doubled its subsidy to $1bn. It also provided him with high-quality germ seed for anthrax, as well as helicopters and dual-use material that could be used to manufacture chemical and biological weapons. It turns out that while Saddam was carrying out his worst atrocities, the US and UK governments were his close allies. So what changed? In August 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait. His sin was not so much that he had committed an act of war, but that he acted independently, without orders from his masters. This display of independence was enough to upset the power equation in the Gulf. so it was decided that Saddam be exterminated, like a pet that has outlived its owner's affection. A decade of bombing has not managed to dislodge him. Now, almost 12 years on, Bush Jr is ratcheting up the rhetoric once again. He's proposing an all-out war whose goal is nothing short of a regime change. Andrew H Card Jr, the White House chief-of-staff, described how the administration was stepping up its war plans for autumn: ``From a marketing point of view,'' he said, ``you don't introduce new products in August.'' This time the catchphrase for Washington's ``new product'' is not the plight of people in Kuwait but the assertion that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Forget ``the feckless moralizing of the `peace' lobbies,'' wrote Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board. The US will ``act alone if necessary'' and use a ``pre-emptive strike'' if it determines it is in US interests. Weapons inspectors have conflicting reports about the status of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and many have said clearly that its arsenal has been dismantled and that it does not have the capacity to build one. What if Iraq does have a nuclear weapon? does that justify a pre-emptive US strike? The US has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. It's the only country in the world to have actually used them on civilian populations. If the US is justified in launching a pre-emptive attack on Iraq, why, any nuclear power is justified in carrying out a pre-emptive attack on any other. India could attack Pakistan, or the other way around. Recently, the US played an important part in forcing India and Pakistan back from the brink of war. Is it so hard for it to take its own advice? Who is guilty of feckless moralizing? Of preaching peace while it wages war? The U.S., which Bush has called ``the most peaceful nation on earth'', has been at war with one country or another every year for the last 50 years. Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then, of course, there's the business of war. In his book on globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Tom Friedman says: ``The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.'' Perhaps this was written in a moment of vulnerability, but it's certainly the most succinct, accurate description of the project of corporate globalization that I have read. After September 11 and the war against terror, the hidden hand and fist have had their cover blown--and we have a clear view now of America's other weapon--the free market--bearing down on the developing world, with a clenched, unsmiling smile. The Task That Never Ends is America's perfect war, the perfect vehicle for the endless expansion of American imperialism. In Urdu, the word for profit is fayda. Al-qaida means the word, the word of God, the law. So, in India, some of us call the War Against Terror, Al-qaida vs Al-fayda--The Word vs The Profit (no pun intended). For the moment it looks as though Al-fayda will carry the day. But then you never know . . . In the past 10 years, the world's total income has increased by an average of 2.5% a year. And yet the numbers of the poor in the world has increased by 100 million. Of the top 100 biggest economies, 51 are corporations, not countries. The top 1% of the world has the same combined income as the bottom 57%, and the disparity is growing. Now, under the spreading canopy of the war against terror, this process is being hustled along. The men in suits are in an unseemly hurry. While bombs rain down contracts are being signed, patents registered, oil pipelines laid, natural resources plundered, water privatized and democracies undermined. But as the disparity between the rich and poor grows, the hidden fist of the free market has its work cut out. Multinational corporations on the prowl for ``sweetheart deal'' that yield enormous profits cannot push them through in developing countries without the active connivance of state machinery--the police, the courts, sometimes even the army. Today, corporate globalization needs an international confederation of loyal, corrupt, preferably authoritarian governments in poorer countries, to push through unpopular reforms and quell the mutinies. It needs a press that pretends to be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense justice. It needs nuclear bombs, standing armies, sterner immigration laws, and watchful coastal patrols to make sure that its only money, goods, patents and services that are globalized--not the free movement of people, not a respect for human rights, not international treaties on racial discrimination or chemical and nuclear weapons, or greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, or, God forbid, justice. It's as though even a gesture towards international accountability would wreck the whole enterprise. Close to one year after the war against terror was officially flagged off in the ruins of Afghanistan, in country after country freedoms are being curtailed in the name of protecting freedom, civil liberties are being suspended in the name of protecting democracy. All kinds of dissent is being defined as ``terrorism''. Donald Rumsfeld said that his mission in the war against terror was to persuade the world that Americans must be allowed to continue their way of life. When the maddened king stamps his foot, slaves tremble in their quarters. So, it's hard for me to say this, but the American way of life is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a world beyond America. Fortunately, power has a shelf life. When the time comes, maybe this mighty empire will, like others before it, overreach itself and implode from within. It looks as though structural cracks have already appeared. As the war against terror casts its net wider and wider, America's corporate heart is hemorrhaging. A world run by a handful of greedy bankers and CEOs whom nobody elected can't possibly last. Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil but because it was flawed. It allowed too few people to usurp too much power: 21st-century market- capitalism, American-style, will fail for the same reasons.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, we should support the Lee amendment by giving unfettered, unconditional support for U.N. inspections for disarmament. Our government has a history of undermining the United Nations and has been particularly bad regarding Iraq. In 1990, we bribed and threatened and punished the Security Council to force a vote endorsing our war. We bribed poor countries with cheap Saudi oil. We bribed China with diplomatic rehabilitation and new development aid. And we told Yemen, the only Arab country on the Council, that its vote against our war would be ``the most expensive vote you ever cast.'' And then we punished Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, with a cutoff of our entire $70 million aid package. As we try to impose our war again on a reluctant United Nations, I fear that the Yemen precedent is being recalled at the U.N. today. I hope that our friends and our allies who might be considering a different approach in the U.N. will not be intimidated by our unilateral abuse of this multilateral institution. The President can always call us back, if he is ready. He says he is not ready. He says war is not imminent. So why are we giving him such an order? Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record an article from The Guardian entitled ``The U.S. Has Been Seeking to Prevent a Resolution of the Iraq Crisis for the Past 8 Years.'' [From the Guardian, Oct. 8, 2002] The U.S. Has Been Seeking To Prevent a Resolution of the Iraq Crisis for the Past Eight Years (By George Monbiot) There is little that those of us who oppose the coming war with Iraq can now do to prevent it. George Bush has staked his credibility on the project; he has mid-term elections to consider, oil supplies to secure and a flagging war on terror to revive. Our voices are as little heeded in the White House as the singing of the birds. Our role is now, perhaps, confined to the modest but necessary task of demonstrating the withdrawal of our consent, while seeking to undermine the moral confidence which could turn the attack on Iraq into a war against all those states perceived to offend US strategic interests. No task is more urgent than to expose the two astonishing lies contained in George Bush's radio address on Saturday, namely that ``the United States does not desire military conflict, because we know the awful nature of war'' and ``we hope that Iraq complies with the world's demands''. Mr. Bush appears to have done everything in his power to prevent Iraq from complying with the world's demands, while ensuring that military conflict becomes inevitable. On July 4 this year, Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United Nations, began negotiating with Iraq over the return of UN weapons inspectors. Iraq had resisted UN inspections for three and a half years, but now it felt the screw turning, and appeared to be on the point of capitulation. On July 5, the Pentagon leaked its war plan to the New York Times. The US, a Pentagon official revealed, was preparing ``a major air campaign and land invasion'' to ``topple President Saddam Hussein''. The talks immediately collapsed. Ten days ago, they were about to resume. Hans Blix, the head of the UN inspections body, was due to meet Iraqi officials in Vienna, to discuss the practicalities of re- entering the country. The US Airforce launched bombing raids on Basra, in southern Iraq, destroying a radar system. As the Russian government pointed out, the attack could scarcely have been better designed to scupper the talks. But this time the Iraqis, mindful of the consequences of excluding he inspectors, kept talking. Last Tuesday, they agreed to let the UN back in. The State Department immediately announced, with more candor than elegance, that it would ``go into thwart mode''. It wasn't bluffing. The following day, it leaked the draft resolution on inspections it was placing before the UN Security Council. This resembles nothing so much as a plan for unopposed invasion. The decision about which sites should be ``inspected'' would no longer be made buy the UN alone, but also by ``any permanent member of the security council'', such as the United States. The people inspecting these sites could also be chosen by the US, and they would enjoy ``unrestricted rights to free, unrestricted and immediate movement'' within Iraq, ``including unrestricted access to presidential sites''. They would be permitted to establish ``regional bases and operating bases throughout Iraq'', where they would be ``accompanied . . . by sufficient U.S. security forces to protect them''. They would have the right to declare exclusion zones, no-fly zones and ``ground and air transit corridors''. They would be allowed to fly and land as many planes, helicopters and surveillance drones in Iraq as they want, to set up ``encrypted communication'' networks and to seize ``any equipment'' they choose to lay hands on. The resolution, in other words, could not have failed to remind Iraq of the alleged infiltration of the U.N. team in 1996. Both the Iraqi government and the former inspector Scott Ritter maintain that the weapons inspectors were joined that year by CIA covert operations specialists, who used the U.N.'s special access to collect information and encourage the republican guard to launch a coup. On Thursday, Britain and the United States instructed the weapons inspectors not to enter Iraq until the new resolution has been adopted. As Milan Rai's new book War Plan Iraq documents, the U.S. has been undermining disarmament for years. The U.N.'s principal means of persuasion was paragraph 22 of the security council's resolution 687, which promised that economic sanctions would be lifted once Iraq ceased to possess weapons of mass destruction. But in April 1994, Warren Christopher, the U.S. secretary of state, unilaterally withdrew this promise, removing Iraq's main incentive to comply. Three years later his successor, Madeleine Albright, insisted that sanctions would not be lifted while Saddam remained in power. The U.S. government maintains that Saddam Hussein expelled the U.N. inspectors from Iraq in 1998, but this is not true. On October 30, 1998, the U.N. rejected a new U.N. proposal by again refusing to lift the oil embargo if Iraq disarmed. On the following day, the Iraqi government announced that it would cease to cooperate with the inspectors. In fact it permitted them to continue working, and over the next six weeks they completed around 300 operations. On December 14, Richard Butler, the head of the inspection team, published a curiously contradictory report. The body of the report recorded that over the past month ``the majority of the inspections of facilities and sites under the ongoing monitoring system were carried out with Iraq's cooperation'', but his well-publicized conclusion was that ``no progress'' has been made. Russia and China accused Butler of bias. On December 15, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. warned him that his team should leave Iraq for its own safety. Butler pulled out, and on the following day the U.S. started bombing Iraq. From that point on, Saddam Hussein refused to allow U.N. inspectors to return. At the end of last year, Jose Bustani, the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, proposed a means of resolving the crisis. His organization had not been involved in the messy business of 1998, so he offered to send in his own inspectors, and complete the job the U.N. had almost finished. The U.S. responded by demanding Bustani's dismissal.The other member states agreed to depose him only after the United States threatened to destroy the organization if he stayed. Now Hans Blinx, the head of the new U.N. inspectorate, may also be feeling the heat. On Tuesday he insisted that he would take his orders only from the security council. On Thursday, after an hour-long meeting with U.S. officials, he agreed with the Americans that there should be no inspections until a new resolution had been approved. For the past eight years the U.S., with Britain's help, appears to have been seeking to prevent a resolution of the crisis in Iraq. It is almost as if Iraq has been kept on ice, as a necessary enemy to be warmed up whenever the occasion demands. Today, as the economy slides and Bin Laden's latest mocking message suggests that the war on terrorism has so far failed, an enemy which can be located and bombed is more necessary than ever. A just war can be pursued only when all peaceful means have been exhausted. In this case, the peaceful means have been averted.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, we are standing at the abyss of a horrifying war. President Bush himself told us Monday night that this war was neither ``imminent nor unavoidable.'' And yet we are pushing, hurrying, racing against time to give the President our approval of a future war, a war without limits or boundaries, a war waged because the President thinks diplomacy has failed. I do not believe diplomacy has failed. And I do not believe we have to go to war. President Bush's speech was designed to frighten the American people, and to intimidate the United Nations. It wasn't address to us, the Congress, because President Bush and his advisers already believe that they have our backing. But they don't have the backing of the American people. The pools tell us that. Our constituents tell us that. The phone calls and faxes and emails and letters to our offices, running 100 to one, 500 to one against this war, all tell us that. I, for one, am not afraid. And I do not think my colleagues in the House and in the Senate should be afraid either. We should not be afraid of standing up to an unnecessary war. We should not be afraid to stand up to a President when he is wrong. We should not be afraid of the American people; they are right. President Bush tells us how important it is, for his campaign to win support in the United Nations, that we here in the United States speak with one voice. But we do not have only one voice; we cannot and will not lend our voices to support a war that we know is wrong. When my colleagues and I went to Iraq, we went to tell the Iraqis that they must allow free and unfettered U.N. inspections. We went to investigate the situation facing Iraqi civilians after 12 years of crippling economic sanctions. And we went knowing that our democracy is strengthened when we see, and hear, and learn and debate all sides. We didn't have to go to Iraq to know why we're against going to war against Iraq. There are plenty of reasons back home to oppose this juggernaut towards a unilateral preemptive strike on Iraq. The first reason is that disarmament should be on top of our Iraq agenda. And getting the United Nations inspectors back in should be the first step towards accomplishing that task. The U.N. must be allowed to take the lead; their inspectors were already close to finishing work on the technical arrangements so they could get to work right away. Iraq had proposed the inspection team arrive as early as October 16th. Initial meetings between Iraqi and U.N. officials were held in March of this year to begin discussions about the return of inspectors to Iraq after they had been excluded for almost four years. Further meetings were held in May and again on the 4th of July. That July meeting was particularly useful, coming in the context of growing international pressure on Iraq and seeming to set the stage for the serious possibility of inspectors returning to Baghdad. But the next day, July 5th, the Pentagon leaked its latest provocative war plan to the New York Times, calling for a major air attack and land invasion to ``topple Saddam Hussein.'' The Iraqis pulled back. But pressure continued to build, and in August the Iraqi Parliament invited members of Congress to come to Baghdad with inspectors of our choosing and to look for ourselves. On September 13th I went to New York to meet with Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, and told him I would accept his invitation to Iraq with the understanding that the inspectors I would choose to accompany me would be the UNMOVIC inspectors themselves. We talked about the absolute necessity of the U.N. resuming unfettered inspections in Iraq, and he said they were ready for such inspections, and they understood that if no weapons were found the Security Council would lift the economic sanctions. I made no promises except to say I would come. Forty-eight hours later, on September 16, Sabri told Kofi Annan that Iraq was prepared to accept the inspectors back into Iraq. Unfortunately, instead of welcoming this development, it became clear that the Bush administration was not prepared to take Iraq's ``yes'' for an answer. The State Department's answer to the long-delayed Iraqi acquiescence was to announce that it was now in ``thwart mode,'' determined to prevent the inspections from going forward. There has been no solid information regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction since UNSCOM and IAEA arms inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 in advance of the U.S. Desert Fox bombing operation. Prior to leaving, the last report (November 1998) of the UNSCOM chief Richard Butler stated explicitly that although they had been hindered by Iraqi non-compliance in carrying out a small number of inspections, ``the majority of the inspections of facilities and sites under the ongoing monitoring system were carried out with Iraq's cooperation.'' the IAEA report was unequivocal that Iraq no longer had a viable nuclear program. The UNSCOM report was less definitive, but months earlier, in March 1998, UNSCOM Chief Richard Butler said that his team was satisfied there was no longer any nuclear or long-range missile capability in Iraq, and that UNSCOM was ``very close'' to completing the chemical and biological phases. Since that time, there have been no verifiable report regarding Iraq's WMD programs. It is important to get inspectors back into Iraq, but U.S. threats for years made that virtually impossible by setting a ``negative incentive'' in place. This pattern has been underway for years. It began when then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced in April 1994 that the U.S. was no longer bound by the U.N. resolution's language promising an end to sanctions when disarmament of Iraq's WMD programs was complete. Similarly, in 1997 Christopher's successor, Madeleine Albright, affirmed that economic sanctions would remain as long as Saddam Hussein was in power--regardless of the U.N. position linking sanctions only to the WMD programs. So Baghdad was told that sanctions would remain regardless of Iraqi compliance with U.N. disarmament requirements. Similarly, the U.S. message today is that a U.S. military strike will likely take place regardless of Iraq's compliance with U.N. resolutions regarding inspections, so they have no reason to implement their own obligations. If the United States refuses to abide by the requirements of U.N. resolutions and the rule of international law, why are we surprised when an embattled and tyrannical government does the same thing? Inspections remain vitally important. Throughout the 1980s the U.S. sent to Baghdad a lethal assortment of high-quality germ seed stock for anthrax, botulism, E. coli, and a host of other deadly diseases. It is certainly possible that scraps of Iraq's earlier biological and chemical weapons programs remain in existence, but their shelf life is likely only three or four years. More significantly, since it is also possible (though we have see no evidence) that Iraq has manufactured additional chemical or biological weapons material, Iraq has no delivery system capable of using them against the U.S. or U.S. allies. The notion that the U.S. must go to war against Iraq because of the existence of tiny amounts of biological material, insufficient for use in missiles or other strategic weapons and which the U.S. itself provided during the years of the U.S.-Iraq alliance in the 1980s, is simply unacceptable. Regarding the nuclear level threat, the IAEA confirmed in 1998 that Iraq had no viable nuclear weapons program. Despite constant allegations, we still have seen no clear evidence that Iraq is anywhere close to being able to manufacture a nuclear weapon. The breathless claim that ``if it obtained sufficient missile material and massive external assistance'' Iraq could manufacture a nuclear weapon in one year is simply spurious. The same statement could be said for Cameroon or Vanuatu--that's why we have military sanctions and that's why we ought to hold the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and other disarmament treaties in much higher regard. Pretty much the whole world believes that inspections and disarmament should be our goal--not the overthrow of the government in Iraq. The Bush administration knows it is isolated in the world on this issue: to say that the U.S. goal is regime overthrow, rather than disarmament would violate the UN Charter. The second reason we should oppose this war has to do with its impact on our relations with allies all over the world. There is virtually no international support, at the governmental or public level, for a U.S. attack on Iraq. Our closest allies throughout Europe, in Canada, and elsewhere, have made clear their opposition to a military invasion. While they recognize the Iraqi regime as a brutal, undemocratic regime, they do not support a unilateral preemptive military assault as an appropriate response to that regime. Our European friends are pleading with us not to go to war, reminding us that disarmament, starting with inspections, is their goal. Russia and China say the same thing. Are we to simply ignore our friends' opinions and go it alone? Throughout the Middle East, the Arab states, including our closest allies, have made unequivocal their opposition to an invasion of Iraq. Even Kuwait, once the target of Iraqi military occupation and ostensibly the most vulnerable to Iraqi threats, has moved to normalize its relations with Baghdad. The Arab League-sponsored rapprochement between Iraq and Kuwait at the March 2002 Arab Summit is now underway, including such long-overdue moves as the return of Kuwait's national archives. Iraq has now repaired its relation with every Arab country, and not a single one of Iraq's neighbors publicly supports a U.S. war. Turkey has refused to publicly announce its agreement to allow use of its air bases, and Jordan and other Arab countries have made clear their urgent plea for the U.S. to abjure a military attack on Iraq. Again, it is certain unlikely that a single government in the region would ultimately stand against a U.S. demand for base rights, use of airspace or overflight rights, or access to any other facilities. The question we must answer therefore is not whether our allies will ultimately accede to our wishes, but just how high a price are we prepared to exact from our allies? Virtually every Arab government, especially those most closely tied to the U.S. (Jordan and Egypt, perhaps even Saudi Arabia) will face dramatically escalated popular opposition. The existing crisis of legitimacy faced by these non- representative regimes, absolute monarchies and president-for-life style democratics, will be seriously exacerbated by a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Region-wide instability may be expected to result, and some of those governments might even face the possibility of being overthrown. In the entire Middle East region, only Israel supports the U.S. build-up to war in Iraq. Prime Minister Sharon has made no secret of his view that the chaos caused by a U.S. attack on Iraq might well provide him with the opportunity for a large-scale escalation against the Palestinians. When President Bush repeats his mantra that ``you are either with us or with the terrorists,'' no government in the world wants to stand defiant. But a foreign policy based on international coercion and our allies' fear of retaliation for noncompliance, is not a policy that will protect Americans and our place in the world. Still another reason to oppose this has to do with the human toll. During the Vietnam war, I was lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps. My job, as a psychiatrist, was to treat young soldiers who returned from that war terribly damaged by what they saw and what they suffered. I carry those memories with me still. While official estimates of casualties among U.S. service personnel are not public, we can be certain they will be much higher than in the current war in Afghanistan. We do know, from Pentagon estimates of two years ago, the likely death toll among Iraqi civilians: about 10,000 Iraqi civilians would be killed. The most recent leaked military plan for invading Iraq, the so-called ``inside-out'' plan based on a relatively small contingent of U.S. ground troops with heavy reliance on air strikes, would focus first and primarily on Baghdad. In fact, all of the leaked military plans begin with air assaults on Baghdad. The Iraqi capital is described as being ringed with Saddam Hussein's crack troops and studded with anti- aircraft batteries. Those charges may or may not be true. But what is never mentioned in the military planning documents is the inconvenient fact that Baghdad is also a crowded city of five million or more people; a heavy air bombardment would cause the equivalent human catastrophe of--and look very similar to--a heavy air bombardment of Los Angeles. And it is here that my trip to Iraq taught me a great deal. It reminded me again of the costs of war. I remembered again what Iraqis would suffer with this war. My colleagues and I visited hospitals, where we saw young cancer patients dying before their mothers eyes from lack of chemotherapy drugs. Further, the destruction of civilian infrastructure such as water, electrical and communications equipment, would lead to tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of more civilian deaths, particularly among children, the aged and others of the most vulnerable sectors. We can anticipate that such targeted attacks would be justified by claims of ``dual use.'' But if we look back to the last U.S. war with Iraq, we know that the Pentagon planned and carried out studies ahead of time, documenting the likely impact on civilians of specific attacks. In one case, Pentagon planners anticipated that striking Iraq's civilian infrastructure would cause ``Increased incidence of diseases [that] will be attributable to degradation of normal preventive medicine, waste disposal, water purification/distribution, electricity, and decreased ability to control disease outbreaks. . . .'' The Defense Intelligence Agency's document (posted on the Pentagon's Gulflink website), is titled ``Disease Information--Subject: Effects of Bombing on Disease Occurrence in Baghdad'' and is dated 22 January 1991, just six days after the war began. It itemized the likely outbreaks of diseases to include: ``acute diarrhea'' brought on by bacteria such as E. coli, shigella, and salmonella, or by protozao such as giardia, which will affect ``particularly children,'' or by rotavirus, which will also affect ``particularly children.'' And despite this advance knowledge, the bombing of the water treatment systems proceeded, and indeed, according to UNICEF figures, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, ``particularly children,'' died from the effects of dirty water. Just as predicted. I traveled with my colleagues to the southern city of Basra, where we heard from physicians that the first question new mothers ask after giving birth is not whether the baby is a boy or a girl, but whether it is normal or not--because the rates of birth defects are so high. Many think those high rates of birth defects, skyrocketing rates of leukemia and other cancers, have something to do with the depleted uranium weapons our military used so efficiently during the war 12 years ago. Many of our own Gulf War veterans--and their children--are also suffering higher than normal rates of cancers and birth defects. And the Veterans Administration medical care budget has just been slashed. Do we want to go to war again, a war that will cost perhaps $60 to $100 billion, and create a whole new generation of wounded veterans, along with too many who will not come home at all? We have not yet heard an answer from the Pentagon to the question of how they plan to protect our men and women in uniform--as well as vulnerable Iraqi civilians-- from the danger of depleted uranium weapons. So far the Pentagon has still not conducted the full-scale scientific study of the impact of DU on the human body. We should not go to war to use our troops as guinea pigs again. I oppose this war because it is a war of empire, not of legitimate self-defense. We claim to be a nation of laws. But too often we are prepared to put aside the requirements of international law and the United Nations Charter to which we hold other nations appropriately accountable. When it comes to policy on Iraq, the U.S. has a history of sidelining the central role that should be played by the United Nations. This increasingly unilateralist trajectory is one of the main reasons for the growing international antagonism towards the U.S. By imposing its will on the Security Council--insisting on the continuation of economic sanctions when virtually every other country wants to lift them, announcing its intention to ignore the UN in deciding whether to go to war against Iraq--the U.S. isolates us from our allies, antagonizes our friends, and sets our nation apart from the international systems of laws that govern the rest of the world. This does not help, but rather undermines, our long-term security interests. International law does not allow for preemptive military strikes, except in the case of extreme emergency to prevent an immediate attack. President Bush himself told us on October 7th that war with Iraq is ``neither imminent nor unavoidable.'' Therefore it does not qualify as self-defense under the UN Charter. We simply do not have the right--no country does--to launch a war against another country that has not attacked us. If the Pentagon had been able to scramble a jet to take down the second plane flying into the World Trade Center last September, that would be a legal us of preemptive self defense. An attack on Iraq--which does not have the capacity, and has not for a decade or more shown any specific intention or plan or effort to attack the U.S.--violates international law and the UN Charter. The Charter, in Article 51, outlines the terms under which a Member State of the United Nations may use force in self-defense. That Article acknowledges a nation's ``inherent right of individual or collective self-defense If an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.'' [Emphasis added.] The Charter does not allow military force to be used absent an armed attack having occurred. Some administration spokespeople are fond of a sound bit that says ``the UN Charter is not a suicide pact.'' Others like to remind us that Iraq (and other nations) routinely violate the Charter. Both statements are true. But the United States has not been attacked by Iraq, and no evidence has been brought forward that Iraq is anywhere close to being able to carry out such an attack. The U.S. is the strongest international power--in terms of global military reach, economic, cultural, diplomatic and political power--that has ever existed throughout history. If the United States--with such massive global power--does not recognize the UN Charter and international law as the foundation of global security and hold ourselves accountable to them, how can we expect others to do so? President Bush's October 7th speech was clearly designed to frighten the American people. Once again that speech disingenuously linked the true horror and legitimate fear of the September 11th attacks with an implied connection to Iraq. The events of September 11 must never happen again, the president proclaims, and we will go to war against Iraq to make sure that they don't. Few of us in the Congress, and too few journalists and pundits, stood to challenge that claim, to remind the American people that no link has been shown between Iraq and the events of September 11th. That there is a war against terrorism that has so far failed to find the perpetrators of those events. That of all the four thousand or more people killed in Afghanistan, not one of them was named Osama bin Laden. It is now clear that (despite intensive investigative efforts) there is simply no evidence as yet of any Iraqi involvement in the terror attacks of September 11. The most popular theory, of a Prague-based collaboration between one of the 9/11 terrorists and an Iraqi official, has collapsed. On July 17th, the Prague Post quoted the director general of the Czech foreign intelligence service UZSI (Office of Foreign Relations and Information), Frantisek Bublan, denying the much- touted meeting between Mohamed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, and an Iraqi agent. The Czech Republic simply had no evidence that such a meeting ever took place, he said. More significantly, the Iraqi regime's brutal treatment of its own population has generally not extended to international terrorist attacks. The State Department's own compilation of terrorist activity in its 2001 Patterns of Global Terrorism, released May 2002, does not document a single serious act of international terrorism by Iraq. Almost all references are to political statements. We are told that we must go to war preemptively against Iraq because Baghdad might, some time in the future, succeed in crafting a dangerous weapon and might, some time in the future, give that weapon to a terrorist group--maybe Osama bin Laden--who might, some time in the future, use that weapon against the U.S. The problem with this analysis, aside from the fact that preemptive strikes are illegal under international law, is that it ignores the widely known historic antagonism between Iraq and bin Laden. According to the New York Times, ``shortly after Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait in 1990, Osama bin Laden approached Prince Saltan bin Abdelaziz al-Saud, the Saudi defense minister, with an unusual proposition. . . . Arriving with maps and many diagrams, Mr. bin Laden told Prince Sultan that the kingdom could avoid the indignity of allowing an army of American unbelievers to enter the kingdom to repel Iraq from Kuwait. He could lead the fight himself, he said, at the head of a group of former mujahideen that he said could number 100,000 men.''\2\ Even if bin Laden's claim to be able to provide those troops was clearly false, bin Laden's hostility towards the ruthlessly secular Iraq remained evident. There is no evidence that that has changed. Ironically, an attack on Iraq would increase the threat to U.S. citizens throughout the Middle East and beyond, as another generation of young Iraqis come to identify Americans only as the pilots of high- flying jet bombers and as troops occupying their country. While today American citizens face no problems from ordinary people in the streets of Baghdad or elsewhere in Iraq, as I found during my visit to Iraq in September 2002, that situation would likely change in the wake of a U.S. attack on Iraq. In other countries throughout the Middle East, already palpable anger directed at U.S. threats would dramatically escalate and would provide a new recruiting tool for extremist elements bent on harm to U.S. interests or U.S. citizens. It would become far more risky for U.S. citizens to travel abroad. Many accusations have been made regarding the role of oil in this war. What is clear is that the public statements of some in the private sector match the undenied whispers of others, such as administration figures themselves. those statements include the intention to render null and void all existing oil exploration contracts signed between Iraq and various national oil companies, particularly those of France and Russia, when the current Iraqi regime is replaced after a U.S. war. I do not want to support a war partly designed to redraft the global oil markets in the interest of undermining French or Russian oil companies and privileging our own. Any of us who are serious about opposing this war must also be serious about alternatives to war. We must take seriously the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Disarmament must be on top of our agenda. We must support the weapons inspection team, not undermining it. We must support the United Nations, not threatening it with irrelevance if its member states don't agree with our war. And we should go beyond the existing efforts to get serious about military sanctions. Denying Iraq access to weapons is not sufficient, nor can it be maintained as long as Iraq is surrounded by some of the most over-armed states in the world. U.S. weapons shipments to all countries in the region aggravate this situation and, as the biggest arms exporter in the world, the U.S. can change it. We can expand the application of military sanctions as defined in UN Resolution 687. Military sanctions against Iraq should be tightened--by expanding them to a system of regional military sanctions, thus lowering the volatility of this already arms-glutted region. Article 14 of resolution 687--the same resolution that calls for sanctions, inspections and destruction of Iraq's WMD programs--points the way. It recognizes that the disarmament of Iraq should be seen as a step towards ``the goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery and the objective of a global ban on chemical weapons. We are told we must attack Iraq preemptively so that it can never obtain nuclear weapons. While we know from IAEA inspectors that Iraq's nuclear program was destroyed by the end of 1998, we do not know what has developed since. We do know, however, a few things. We know that nuclear facilities are of necessity large, visible to surveillance satellites, and detectable by a host of telltale chemical and radiological footprints. Such facilities cannot be mounted on the back of a pick-up truck. Our intelligence indicates that Iraq does not have access to fissile material, without which any nuclear program is a hollow shell. And we know where fissile material is. Protection of all nuclear material, including insuring continuity of the funding for protection of Russian nuclear material, must be an on-going priority. We should note that U.S. officials are threatening a war against Iraq, a country known not to possess nuclear weapons. Simultaneously, the administration is continuing appropriate negotiations with North Korea, which does have something much closer to nuclear weapons capacity. Backed by IAEA inspections, the model of negotiations and inspections is exactly what the U.S. should be proposing for Iraq. And what about ``the day after''? There is no democratic opposition ready to take over in Iraq. Far more likely than the creation of an indigenous, popularly-supported democratic Iraqi government, would be the replacement of the current regime with one virtually indistinguishable from it except for the man at the top. In February 2002 Newsweek magazine profiled the five leaders said to be on Washington's short list of candidates to replace Saddam Hussein. The Administration has not publicly issued such a list of its own, but it certainly typifies the model the U.S. has in mind. All five of the candidates were high-ranking officials within the Iraqi military until the mid-1990s. All five have been linked to the use of chemical weapons by the military; at least one admits it. The legitimacy of going to war against a country to replace a brutal military leader with another brutal leader must be challenged. And whoever is installed in Baghdad by victorious U.S. troops, it is certain that a long and possibly bloody occupation would follow. The price would be high; Iraqis know better than we do how their government has systematically denied them civil and political rights. But they hold us responsible for stripping them of their economic and social rights--the right to sufficient food, clear water, education, medical care--that together form the other side of the human rights equation. Economic sanctions have devastated Iraqi society. After twelve years those in Washington who believe that Iraqis accept the popular inside- the-Beltway mantra that ``sanctions aren't responsible, Saddam Hussein is responsible'' for hunger and deprivation in Iraq, are engaged in wishful thinking. The notion that everyone in Iraq will welcome as ``liberators'' those whom most Iraqis hold responsible for 12 years of crippling sanctions is simply naive. Basing military strategy on such wishful speculation becomes very dangerous--in particular for U.S. troops themselves. An U.S. invasion of Iraq would risk the lives of U.S. military personnel and kill potentially thousands of Iraqi civilians, it is not surprising that many U.S. military officers, including some within the Joint Chief's of Staff, are publicly opposed to a new war against Iraq. such an attack would violate international law and the UN Charter, and isolate us from our friends and allies around the world. An invasion would complicate the return of UN arms inspectors, and will cost billions of dollars urgently needed at home. And at the end of the day, an invasion will not insure stability, let alone democracy, in Iraq or the rest of the volatile Middle east region. Rather, it will put American civilians at greater risk than they are today. We need disarmament, not a war for empire, oil, or ``regime change.'' We need the UN inspectors to go in and finish their work. Until they do, we simply don't know what weapons Iraq has or doesn't have. Let us not go to war, in pursuit of oil or the blandishments of empire. War is too important and its consequences too disastrous.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne) for yielding me time. Madam Speaker, the true question before us today is: Why should we go to war with Iraq? This is the last chance we will have before it starts. The rule has been that the people of this country do not wage war and lay down lives when there might be a threat. The rule has been that the people of this country do not wage war and lay down lives to achieve regime change in another country. With Iraq, we are moving into brand new territory. We are not just demanding disarmament. We are demanding that a ruler be removed. The President's press secretary publicly suggested assassination. This is new, Madam Speaker. This is new, and we should say no today. Because, first, their resolution is premature. There has been no showing by the intelligence agencies or the White House of imminent danger to the United States. That Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who has committed heinous crimes is undeniable. It is likely that he still seeks weapons of mass destruction. But we have a way to thwart his desire: inspection and disarmament. For regime change, we stand alone. For inspection and disarmament, we have allies, we have a coalition, we have the U.N. Last march, the Iraq government began discussions with Dr. Hans Blix and UNMOVIC about resuming inspections so that the oppressive sanctions could be lifted. The Iraqi Parliament then invited Members of Congress to come to Baghdad with their own inspectors. I spoke with Foreign Minister Naji Sabri in September in New York for an hour about the absolute necessity for unfettered inspections. I told him if I went to Iraq, I wanted ``my inspectors'' to be UNMOVIC, the U.N. inspectors. As I left he said, ``I think the Congress will be surprised soon.'' Three days later, Sabri wrote to Kofi Annan, accepting the inspectors under the existing U.N. resolutions. Unfortunately, instead of welcoming the shift in Iraq's position, President Bush could not take ``yes'' for an answer. Madam Speaker, we must let these inspections take place immediately, with or without a new U.N. resolution. Let Blix do his job. If, God forbid, the Iraqis return to obstruction, we are ready to return to the Security Council for whatever Dr. Blix needs to get the job done. The stakes are high if we make a hasty decision today. If we focus on disarmament, we may be able to hold onto the coalition we have built to fight terrorism. But if we do not, we force Middle Eastern countries to choose between their Arab neighbors and us. If we act alone to achieve regime change, the whole Arab world will wonder, who is next? Our President will become the poster boy for al Qaeda recruiters; and Americans will be less, not more, safe at home and abroad. If we pass this resolution, we are setting precedents that we will regret, that America can start preemptive wars and that Congress can turn over authority to start a war to the President. Vote ``no'' to honor the constitutional principle that only Congress can declare war. War cannot be started, or launched without declaration, on the word of a President whose attention span for diplomacy is exhausted and who notifies Congress 48 hours after the missiles have been launched. The legacies of wars remain with us forever. I learned that not from a textbook, but from people who fought in a confusing and undeclared war. From 1968 to 1970, I served in the United States Navy as a psychiatrist treating sailors and Marines suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I saw firsthand the price in grief and anger the troops and their families paid when they were sent into a war whose goals were at best obscure, and at worse deceptive. Under the terms of this resolution, the United States may attack Iraq solely on the basis of the President's view, and only the President's view, that diplomacy has failed. When Congress was given responsibility for declarations of war, the Founders had just finished a war. They knew the human cost. They decided the responsibility for going to war should not reside in one person, but must be the duty of the whole Congress. We cannot cede this responsibility to any occupant of the White House, no matter how wise or from which party he or she comes. I have a suggestion. Let us adjourn for an hour right now and go down to the Vietnam Memorial before we commit ourselves and our children to an unknown world in which any President can decide to go to war as long as he or she determines it is in the national interest at the moment. Let us look at the names one more time before we wipe away the efforts of 60 years to weave the world together through the U.N. and international law. After two World Wars in 25 years, world leaders have remained committed to doing their best to prevent such an event ever given. By and large, they have succeeded. Let us not, in pursuit of oil or power or the blandishments of empire, be the ones who lead the world to failure. Madam Speaker, I include for the Record two articles which expand on my position. [From the Institute for Public Accuracy] Detailed Analysis of October 7 Speech by Bush on Iraq Thank you for that very gracious and warm Cincinnati welcome. I'm honored to be here tonight. I appreciate you all coming. Tonight I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave threat to peace and America's determination to lead the world in confronting that threat. The threat comes from Iraq. It arises directly from the Iraqi regime's own actions, its history of aggression and its drive toward an arsenal of terror. Chris Toensing, editor of Middle East Report: ``This might indicate that Iraq is actively threatening the peace in the region. There is no evidence whatsoever that Iraq is doing so, or has any intention of doing so. Other powers are actively disrupting the peace in the region: Israel is trying to crush Palestinian resistance to occupation with brute force, and the U.S. and Britain have bombed Iraq 46 times in 2002 when their aircraft are `targeted' by Iraqi air defense systems in the bilaterally enforced no-fly zones. Most of our `friends' in the region--Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan--have strongly urged us not to go to war, and to tone down the war rhetoric. Aren't they better positioned than we are to judge what threatens their safety?'' Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons and to stop all support for terrorist groups. Rahul Mahajan, author of The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism: Resolution 687 also speaks of `establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction'-- which also means Israel's 200-plus nuclear weapons as well as Syria's and Egypt's apparent chemical weapons capabilities, and any nuclear capability the U.S. has placed in the region.'' The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. As'ad Abukhalil, author of Bin Laden, Islam & America's New `War on Terrorism' and associate professor of political science at California State University at Stanislaus: ``The president fails to credit Reagan's and his father's adminsitrations--prominent members of which included Rumsfeld and Cheney--for their help in the construction of Saddam's arsenal, especially in the area of germ warfare.'' Toensing: ``After being presented with evidence that Iraq had used chemical weapons to attack the Kurds in 1987-88, the Reagan administration blocked a Senate resolution imposing sanctions on Iraq, and continued to pursue good relations with the regime.'' James Jennings, president of Conscience International, a humanitarian aid organization that has worked in Iraq since 1991: ``The evidence that Iraq gassed its own people is also not about a current event, but one that happened fourteen years ago. If that did not constitute a good enough reason for going to war with Iraq in 1988 (which the U.S. did not even contemplate at the time), it certainly is not a good enough reason now.'' It is seeking nuclear weapons. Susan Wright, co-author of Biological Warfare and Disarmament: New Problems/New Perspectives: ``How does Bush know this? It's as if the inspections have already been conducted and we know the outcome. We're expected to accept the administration's word for this without seeing any evidence. We have no way of judging the accuracy of these claims and the only way to do so is to hold inspections. The only country in the region that is known to possess a nuclear arsenal is Israel.'' [The Administration says that it does not know if Israel has nuclear weapons: www.commondreams.org/ headlines02/0521-06.htm] Mahajan: ``There's no evidence that Iraq has gotten anywhere with seeking nuclear weapons. The pitiful status of evidence in this regards is shown by claims in e.g. Blair's dossier that Iraq is seeking uranium from Africa, year and country unspecified. South Africa is, of course, the only country in the continent that has potentially the capacity for enrichment of uranium to bomb quality, and claims not to have supplied Iraq with uranium. Unenriched uranium does Iraq little good, since enrichment facilities are large, require huge investment, and cannot easily be hidden.'' It has given shelter and support to terrorism and practices terror against its own people. The entire world has witnessed Iraq's 11-year history of defiance, deception, and bad faith. We also must never forget the most vivid events of recent history. On September 11, 2001, America felt its vulnerability--even to threats that gather on the other side of the earth. We resolved then, and we are resolved today, to confront every threat, from any source, that could bring sudden terror and suffering to America. Members of the Congress of both political parties, and members of the United Nations Security Council, agree that Saddam Hussein is a threat to peace and must disarm. We agree that the Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons, and diseases, and gases, and atomic weapons. Toensing: ``Only two members of the U.N. Security council would appear to agree with the idea that Iraq threatens, or will threaten, `America and the world' with Weapons of Mass Destruction, making the next sentence disingenuous at best.'' Since we all agree on this goal, the issue is: How can we best achieve it? Many Americans have raised legitimate questions: About the nature of the threat. About the urgency of action--and why be concerned now? About the link between Iraq developing weapons of terror, and the wider war on terror. These are all issues we have discussed broadly and fully within my administration. And tonight, I want to share those discussions with you. Toensing: ``Bush may have shared the discussion, but he did not share the evidence, saying, like the British dossier and CIA reports, that intelligence has established the threat. But Americans apparently will not be seeing it.'' First, some ask why Iraq is different from other countries or regimes that also have terrible weapons. While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone--because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant, who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. This same tyrant has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility towards the United States. Stephen Zunes, author of ``Tinderbox: U.S., Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism'' and associate professor of politics at the University of San Francisco: ``The hostility towards the United States is a direct consequence of U.S. hostility toward Iraq. Iraq was quite unhostile to the United States when it was receiving support from the United States during the 1980s. The answer is certainly not to appease Iraq's tyrannical regime, as was done in the past. However, to imply this hostility is unrelated to the U.S. destruction of much of Iraq's civilian infrastructure and other actions during the Gulf War which went far beyond what was necessary to rid Iraqi forces from Kuwait and the U.S.- led sanctions and its impact upon the civilian population is very misleading.'' AbuKhalil: ``If Bush wants to punish nations that `tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning' then he would have to punish Israel for an occupation of Palestinian lands that lasted far longer than the now famous (yet brief) Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. Of course, Iraq did attack Iran and Kuwait, and Israel in the span of 30 years has attacked Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, not to mention Palestine, and not to mention a civilian Libyan airliner that was downed by Israeli forces in 1973.'' By its past and present actions, buy its technological capabilities, by the merciless nature of its regime, Iraq is unique. As a former chief weapons inspector for the U.N. has said, ``The fundamental problem with Iraq remains the nature of the regime itself: Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.'' Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today--and we do--does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons? Zunes: ``He was far more dangerous in the 1980s when the U.S., was supporting him. It will take many years, assuming military sanctions continue to effect, before he comes close to the strength he was then. If U.N. inspectors are allowed to return, it would be impossible--even if they don't find 100 percent of everything--to get much stronger than he is today.'' In 1995, after several years of deceit by the Iraqi regime, the head of Iraq's military industries defected. It was then that the regime was forced to admit that it had produced more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. The inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq had likely produced two to four times that amount. Zunes: ``If this is really a concern, then why did the United States supply Iraq with the seed stock of anthrax spores back in the 1980s'' [William Blum, ``Anthrax for Export: U.S. Companies Sold Iraq the Ingredients for a Witch's Brew,'' The Progressive, April 1998, p. 18] This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and is capable of killing millions. Zunes: ``This is like saying that a man is capable of making millions of women pregnant. It's a matter of delivery systems, of which there is no proof that Iraq currently has.'' We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, and VX nerve gas. Saddam Hussein also has experience in using chemical weapons. He has ordered chemical attacks on Iran, and on more than forty villages in his own country. These actions killed or injured at least 20,000 people, more than six times the number of people who died in the attacks of September 11. Mahajan: ``All of this was done with the full support, approval, and connivance of the U.S. government. U.S.- supplied `agricultural credits' helped fund the sustained counterinsurgency campaign in northern Iraq; the United States supplied military intelligence to Iraq for use against Iran even when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons in the war; and the United States ran diplomat interference for Iraq at the U.N.'' Toensing: ``The U.S. restored diplomatic relations with Iraq in 1984, while it was in the midst of fighting the first of these wars of aggression, because the U.S. wanted to contain the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The U.S. and Britain tilted toward Iraq throughout the war, and U.S. allies in the region, chief among them Saudi Arabia, bankrolled the Iraqi war effort. The U.S. was still trying to become closer to Iraq when it invaded Kuwait.'' Zunes: ``He attacked Iranian troops because he knew Iran had no allies that would defend it. And we now know that officials from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assisted Iraq in targeting Iranian forces in the full knowledge that they were using chemical weapons. Saddam used chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians because he knew they couldn't fight back. And the U.S. helped cover up the Halabja massacre and other assaults by falsely claiming the Iranians were responsible. In other words, Saddam is a coward. He will use WMDs when he knows he won't have to suffer the consequences, especially when the world's most powerful country is supporting him.'' And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it has used to produce chemical and biological weapons. Toensing: ``That it `has used.' The last time Bush made a big deal of this, he claimed that Iraq was again using the facilities in this way, an assertion which the IAEA promptly rebutted as unverifiable. It still is unverifiable.'' Every chemical and biological weapon that Iraq has or makes is a direct violation of the truce that ended the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Mahajan: ``There are no credible allegations that Iraq produced chemical or biological agents while inspectors were in the country, until December 1998. The reason we don't know whether they are producing those agents or not since then is that inspectors were withdrawn at the U.S. behest preparatory to the Desert Fox bombing campaign.'' Yet Saddam Hussein has chosen to build and keep these weapons, despite international sanctions, U.N. demands, and isolation from the civilized world. [The U.S. has maintained for years that it would continue the sanctions regardless of Iraq's behavior regarding weapons, see ``Autopsy of a Disaster: The U.S. Sanctions Policy on Iraq--Myth: The Sanctions Will be Lifted When Iraq Complies with the U.N. Inspections'': www.accuracy.org/iraq] Zunes: ``Again, the U.S. has yet to produce evidence that Iraq is building such weapons. Also, U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 calls for Iraqi disarmament as part of a region-wide disarmament effort which the United States has refused to enforce or even support.'' 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. Toensing: ``That is a neat rhetorical trick. Bush knows that Turkey and Saudi Arabia themselves do not feel under threat from Iraq's WMD, so he doesn't claim that. Rather, it's the threat to U.S. servicemen and oil company employees based in those countries which should concern us. The questions left unasked are why Iraq would attack Americans, knowing the massive response that would incur, and of course why so many American troops `live and work' in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. They're partly there in forward deployment against Iraq.'' Zunes: ``According to UNSCOM, 817 of Iraq's 819 Soviet- built ballistic missiles have been accounted for and destroyed. They may possess up to a couple of dozen home-made versions, but none of these have been tested and it is questionable whether they have any function launchers.'' We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical and biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using UAVs for missions targeting the United States. Toensing: ``Other intelligence experts have disputed that UAVs are a threat, because the agents they released might disperse to basically harmless levels by the time they reached the ground if the UAV was trying to cover such a broad area.'' Mahajan: ``The claim that these UAVs have ranges that would enable attacking the United States, and that they could reach it undetected, is a startling new one, and entirely untenable. No one has ever produced evidence of Iraqi capability or intent to target the United States directly.'' And, of course, sophisticated delivery systems are not required for a chemical or biological attack--all that might be required are a small container and one terrorist or Iraqi intelligence operative to delivery it. Mahajan: ``Bioterrorist attacks and delivery of biological agents aren't that easy--the very limited effects of the anthrax attacks showed that. In fact, the loss of life in the anthrax attacks occurred mostly among the postal workers who were not issued antibiotics, and not among the congressional staff who were. As for chemical attacks with `a small container and one terrorist,' they would be severely limited in effect.'' And that is the source of our urgent concern about Saddam Hussein's link to international terrorist groups. Over the years, Iraq has provided safe haven to terrorists such as Abu Nidal, whose terror organization carried out more than ninety terrorist attacks in twenty countries that killed or injured nearly 900 people, including 12 Americans. Michael Ratner is president of the Center for Constitutional Rights: ``Although U.S. intelligence agencies have not found a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, Bush mentions one, but no evidence is shown. Likewise he tries to frighten Americans by talking about the crimes of Abu Nidal, but Abu Nidal is dead. Again it is an attempt to create fear by association with something from the past, not evidence of a current threat.'' Iraq has also provided safe haven to Abu Abbas, who was responsible for seizing the Achille Lauro and killing an American passenger. And we know that Iraq is continuing to finance terror, and gives assistance to groups that use terrorism to undermine Middle East peace. Toensing: ``Yes, but neither of these groups is ideologically anti-American. Their attacks are aimed at Israel and Israeli interests, including the killing of Leon Klinghoffer and other Americans. This is a crucial piece of context.'' We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy--the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We have learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb making, poisons, and deadly gases. Jennings: ``The claim that al-Qaeda is in Iraq is disingenuous, if not an outright lie. Yes, the U.S. has known for some time that up to 400 al-Qaeda-type Muslim extremists, the Ansar al-Ialam, formerly `Jund al-Islam,' a splinter of the Iranian-backed Islamic Unity Movement of Kurdistan, were operating inside the Kurdish security zone set up under U.S. protection in the North of Iraq. For some reason this was kept quiet and has not been much reported in the mainstream media. Finally last Spring the Kurds themselves attacked and killed most of the terrorists in their territory, sending the rest fleeing for their lives across the border into Iran. Since this area was under U.S. protection, and not under Saddam Hussein's rule, it's pretty hard to claim that al-Qaeda operates in Iraq.'' Mahajan: ``Al-Qaeda has carried out no chemical or biological attacks. The anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001 were almost certainly from a U.S. government employee. It's hard to know what, if anything, to make of claims that one ``senior al Qaeda leader'' got medical treatment in Baghdad. Giving medical treatment, even to criminals, is not illegal, and with so little evidence given to us, there's no reason to suppose this isn't another story like the one about a meeting between Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence in Prague (now discredited).'' And we know that after September 11, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliances with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints. Mahajan: ``Biological or chemical weapons would undoubtedly leave fingerprints, just as the anthrax attacks in the fall did. Even if Iraq couldn't be conclusively shown to be the source of such materials, the U.S. government would assume Iraq was the source. Iraq has been under the gun ever since the Gulf War, and can't possibly assume that it could get away with such an attack. Moreover, Saddam has traditionally seen WMD as his ace in the hole, protecting him from defeat. Paranoid dictators do not give control of something they see as the foundation of their security into the hands of networks, like al-Qaeda, which they can't control.'' Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary, confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror. When I spoke to the Congress more than a year ago, I said that those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves. Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction. And he cannot be trusted. The risk is simply too great that he will use them, or provide them to a terror network. Terror cells, and outlaw regimes building weapons of mass destruction, are different faces of the same evil. Our security requires that we confront both. And the United States military is capable of confronting both. Many people have asked how close Saddam Hussein is to developing a nuclear weapon. We don't know exactly, and that is the problem. Before the Gulf War, the best intelligence indicated that Iraq was eight to 10 years away from developing a nuclear weapon; after the war, international inspectors learned that the regime had been much closer. The regime in Iraq would likely have possessed a nuclear weapon no later than 1993. The inspectors discovered that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a workable nuclear weapon, and was pursuing several different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. Toensing: ``Yes, inspectors learned all of this--the inspections worked.'' Before being barred from Iraq in 1998, the International Atomic Energy Agency dismantled extensive nuclear weapons- related facilities, including three uranium-enrichment sites. Robert Jensen, author of ``Writing Dissent'' and an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin: ``Bush at least acknowledged that we know little about Saddam's nuclear capability, but he lied about why. Bush claimed that Iraq barred the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1998. In fact, the inspectors, along with those from the U.N. Special Commission, were withdrawn by their agencies--not expelled by Iraq--in December 1998 when it became clear the Clinton administration was going to bomb Iraq (as it did) and the safety of the inspectors couldn't be guaranteed. The inspectors also spied for the United States, in violation of their mandate.'' This same year, information from a high-ranking Iraqi nuclear engineer who had defected, revealed that despite his public promises, Saddam Hussein had ordered his nuclear program to continue. The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his ``nuclear mujahedeen''--his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Toensing: ``As Lincoln Chafee said on NPR, if these satellite photos exist, then surely the public has a right to see them. Surely mere photos would not compromise sources and methods.'' [In 1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, the U.S. government claimed that Iraqi troops were threatening Saudi Arabia; this turned out to be false.] Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Mahajan: ``The aluminum tubes can also be used in conventional artillery, which Iraq is allowed to have. In the past, when Iraq tried to build such centrifuges, they used steel tubes. This is an incredibly weak indicator.'' If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly-enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. Toensing: ``Both the CIA report and the British dossier say that this is very unlikely as long as Iraqi remains under sanctions.'' Mahajan: ``This means only that it has the technological know-how to create the high-explosive `lenses' necessary to set off the appropriate nuclear chain reaction. As long as it retains its scientists, this will remain the case.'' And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed. Saddam Hussein would be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression. He would be in a position to dominate the Middle East. He would be in a position to threaten America. And Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to terrorists. Mahajan: ``Again, such an act is not at all consonant with the history or the mindset of Saddam Hussein. One organization hosted by the Iraqi government, which is classified as terrorist by the State Department, is the Iranian Mujahedin-I-Khalq, whose activities are directed against the current government of Iran. They have never had access to any nonconventional resources from the Government of Iraq. Saddam Hussein sees the radical Islamist terrorist networks like al-Qaeda as a huge potential threat to his own rule, something that concerns him far more than any unrealistic ideas of revenge against the United States. Anything that could allow al-Qaeda (which, in its turn, is likely more concerned with replacing regimes in the Middle East with new radical Islamist regimes) to blackmail him would be the last thing he would give them.'' Some citizens wonder: After 11 years of living with this problem, why do we need to confront it now? There is a reason. We have experienced the horror of September 11. We have seen that those who hate America are willing to crash airplanes into buildings full of innocent people. Our enemies would be no less willing--in fact they would be eager--to use a biological, or chemical, or a nuclear weapon. Mahajan: ``Invoking September 11 without showing any kind of link between the government of Iraq and those attacks is just transparent manipulation. What he really means is that after September 11 he thinks he can get away with such a policy.'' Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof--the smoking gun--that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. As President Kennedy said in October of 1962: ``Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world,'' he said, ``where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril.'' Jacqueline Cabasso, Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation: ``The hypocrisy in this speech--and in the Bush Administration's overall national security strategy--is monumental. If having weapons of mass destruction and a history of using them is a criteria, then surely the United States must pose the greatest threat to humanity that has ever existed. While Bush warns that `we cannot wait for the final proof. . . . the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,' his September 2002 National Security Strategy states that `America will act against. . . emerging threats before they are fully formed. . . . by acting preemptively.' And his top-secret Nuclear Posture Review, leaked to the New York Times earlier this year, reveals that `U.S. nuclear forces will continue to provide assurance. . . in the event of surprising military developments. . . Current examples of immediate contingencies include an Iraqi attack on Israel or its neighbors. . . .' It doesn't take a lot of imagination to predict that if Iraq is attacked by the U.S. it might launch whatever it has at Israel-itself a nuclear power. Further, while the U.S. is massively expanding its biological weapons research capabilities for example by upgrading its bioresearch facilities at the Livermore and Los Alamos Nuclear weapons labs to aerosolize live anthrax and genetically modify bioorganisms it is blocking a protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention that would allow international inspectors into U.S. facilities. The Bush Administration's unilateral headlong rush to war threatens to unleash unprecedented regional instability and potentially catastrophic loss of life. It's hard to image a more self-destructive course of action.'' Understanding the threats of our time, knowing the designs and deceptions of the Iraqi regime, we have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring. Some believe we can address this danger by simply resuming the old approach to inspections, and applying diplomatic and economic pressure. Yet this is precisely what the world has tried to do since 1991. The U.N. inspections program was met with systematic deception. The Iraqi regime bugged hotel rooms and offices of inspectors to find where they were going next. They forged documents, destroyed evidence, and developed mobile weapons facilities to keep a step ahead of inspectors. Eight so-called presidential palaces were declared off- limits to unfettered inspections. These sites actually encompass 12 square miles, with hundreds of structures, both above and below the ground, where sensitive materials could be hidden. [In fact, there were inspections of these ``presidential palaces.''] Zunes: ``These are not off-limits. They are open to unfettered inspections as long as an Iraqi official is accompanying the inspectors. Such a proviso is quite legal under U.N. Security Council resolutions authorizing the creation of UNMOVIC, resolutions that were supported by the United States.'' The world has also tried economic sanctions and watched Iraq use billions of dollars in illegal oil revenues to fund more weapons purchases, rather than providing for the needs of the Iraqi people. Toensing: `Yes, and all the while, the U.S. and Britain were undermining the logic of sanctions and inspections by speaking of regime change, giving the regime no incentive to cooperate.'' Mahajan: ``The government-instituted food ration program in Iraq has been widely praised, characterized as `second to none' by Tun Myat, current U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq. Money that comes in under the Oil for Food program cannot, despite constant allegations, be used for weapons purchases--all proceeds from such sales are deposited to an escrow account in New York which is controlled by the U.N. Sanctions Committee. The government of Iraq cannot touch any of this money.'' The world has tried limited military strikes to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities only to see them openly rebuilt, while the regime again denies they even exist. Mahajan: ``For `world' here, read `United States and its lieutenant, the United Kingdom.' Those military strikes were a blatant violation of international law, done without Security Council authorization.'' The world has tried no-fly zones to keep Saddam from terrorizing his own people . . . and in the last year alone, the Iraqi military has fired upon American and British pilots more than 750 times. Toensing: ``Another remarkable rhetorical trick. The no-fly zones did not protect the Kurds from Iraqi incursions in 1995-96, nor have they protected the Shia or the marsh Arabs from ground-based repression throughout the decade. But rather than mention these somewhat significant failures, Bush concentrates on Iraqi air defenses, which have yet to come close to actually hitting a U.S. or U.K. jet. As with the Saudi-Turkish point above, it appears that U.S.-U.K. attempts to protect the peoples of the region are to be counted as failures because the U.S. and U.K. are in danger.'' Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law and author of The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence: ``It is the U.S. government that is violating the United Nations Charter . . . by using military force to allegedly `police' these illegal `no-fly' zones that have never been authorized by the U.N. Security Council or by the U.S. Congress, in violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution as well. Iraq is simply exercising its legitimate right of self-defense under U.N. Charter article 51. The Bush administration has deliberately put U.S. pilots in harm's way in order to concoct a pretext for a catastrophic war of aggression against Iraq. The best way for the American people to protect the lives of our military personnel in the Persian Gulf is to bring them all home.'' Mahajan: ``Again, the no-fly zones don't involve the `world,' but are a naked projection of American and British power (France, the third partner in the no-fly zones, withdrew in 1996), unsanctioned by the Security Council.'' After 11 years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons, and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon. Clearly, to actually work, any new inspections, sanctions, or enforcement mechanisms will have to be very different. America wants the U.N. to be an effective organization that helps to keep the peace. That is why we are urging the Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting our tough, immediate requirements. AbuKhalil: ``Bush also fails to mention American violations of the sanctions regime, by using the inspectors to spy on Iraq, and to obtain information unrelated to the U.N. mandate.'' Among those requirements, the Iraqi regime must reveal and destroy, under U.N. supervision, all existing weapons of mass destruction. To ensure that we learn the truth, the regime must allow witnesses to its illegal activities to be interviewed outside of the country. And these witnesses must be free to bring their families with them, so they are all beyond the reach of Saddam Hussein's terror and murder. And inspectors must have access to any site, at any time, without pre-clearance, without delay, without exceptions. Susan Wright: ``[The evidence] suggests that the United States and the United Kingdom intend to set such tough conditions for the further arms inspections in Iraq that they would create a double bind. If Iraq rejects the conditions, then war with the United States will follow. If Iraq attempts to comply and an ambiguity triggers action by the security forces of one of the permanent members of the Security Council, which according to this draft, might accompany an inspection team, war could follow anyway. Other members of the Security Council should reject such traps. It is also essential to avoid a situation in which the inspection force is effectively hijacked by the United States and used for espionage, as was the case with the U.N. Special Commission in the 1990s.'' The time for denying, deceiving, and delaying has come to an end. Saddam Hussein must disarm himself--or, for the sake of peace, we will lead a coalition to disarm him. Many nations are joining us in insisting that Saddam Hussein's regime be held accountable. They are committed to defending the international security that protects the lives of both our citizens and theirs. AbuKhalil: ``When Bush speaks about `many nations' supporting the U.S., he certainly means Israel and U.K., although public opinion in U.K. is running solidly against Bush's war.'' And that is why America is challenging all nations to take the resolutions of the U.N. Security Council seriously. Zunes: ``There are well over 90 U.N. Security Council resolutions that are currently being violated by countries other than Iraq. The vast majority of these resolutions are being violated by allies of the United States that receive U.S. military, economic and diplomatic support. Indeed, the U.S. has effectively blocked the U.N. Security Council from enforcing these resolutions against its allies.'' Those resolutions are very clear. In addition to declaring and destroying all of its weapons of mass destruction, Iraq must end its support for terrorism. It must cease the persecution of its civilian population. It must stop all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. And it must release or account for all Gulf War personnel, including an American pilot, whose fate is still unknown. Zunes: ``Most of these do not fall under Chapter VII, which allows for the UNSC to authorize the use of force.'' AbuKhalil: ``And Bush's sudden concern for U.N. resolutions should not lead one to believe that he will next move to implement all U.N. resolutions--including those against U.S. allies''. By taking these steps, and only by taking these steps, the Iraqi regime has an opportunity to avoid conflict. These steps would also change the nature of the Iraqi regime itself. America hopes the regime will make that choice. Unfortunately, at least so far, we have little reason to expect it. This is why two administrations--mine and President Clinton's--have stated that regime change in Iraq is the only certain means of removing a great danger to our nation. I hope this will not require military action, but it may. And military conflict could be difficult. An Iraqi regime faced with its own demise may attempt cruel and desperate measures. If Saddam Hussein orders such measures, his generals would be well advised to refuse those orders. If they do not refuse, they must understand that all war criminals will be pursued and punished. If we have to act, we will take every precaution that is possible. We will plan carefully, we will act with the full power of the United States military, we will act with allies at our side, and we will prevail. There is no easy or risk-free course of action. Some have argued we should wait--and that is an option. In my view, it is the riskiest of all options--because the longer we wait, the stronger and bolder Saddam Hussein will become. We could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapons to blackmail the world. But I am convinced that is a hope against all evidence. As Americans, we want peace--we work and sacrifice for peace--and there can be no peace if our security depends on the will and whims of a ruthless and aggressive dictator. I am not willing to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein. Mahajan: ``Throughout all of this, there has never been any credible evidence introduced to indicate that Hussein has any policy of trying to target Americans. His depredations have almost always been distinguished by actions against people that the Western powers don't care about.'' Failure to act would embolden other tyrants; allow terrorists access to new weapons and new resources; and make blackmail a permanent feature of world events. The United Nations would betray the purpose of its founding, and prove irrelevant to the problems of our time. And through its inaction, the United States would resign itself to a future of fear. That is not the America I know. That is not the America I serve. We refuse to live in fear. This nation--in world war and in Cold War--has never permitted the brutal and lawless to set history's course. Zunes: ``Then why did the United States support Indonesian dictator Suharto for over three decades, as he oversaw the massacre of over a half million of his own people, invaded the tiny nation or East Timor, resulting in the deaths of an additional 200,000? How about brutal and lawless governments in Turkey, Morocco and Israel that have invaded neighboring countries at the cost of thousands of civilian lives? How about Pinochet and other Latin American tyrants supported by the U.S.?'' Now, as before, we will secure our nation, protect our freedom, and help others to find freedom of their own. Some worry that a change of leadership in Iraq could create instability and make the situation worse. The situation could hardly get worse, for world security, and for the people of Iraq. The lives of Iraqi citizens would improve dramatically if Saddam Hussein were no longer in power, just as the lives of Afghanistan's citizens improved after the Taliban. Toensing: ``Given what is known about the return of warlordism and chaos to Afghanistan--not to mention the fiction that Afghan women have all thrown away their burqas-- this is a debatable proposition, and indicative of the administration's lack of interest in rebuilding Afghanistan. Why would Iraq be any different?'' Mahajan: ``On every test of justice and of pragmatism, the war on Afghanistan fails. Worse, every one of these aspects, from an increased threat of terrorism to large numbers of civilian deaths to installation of a U.S.-controlled puppet regime is due to play out again in the war on Iraq. In fact, though it has been little noted, the sanctions regime has made Iraqis dependent on centralized, government-distributed food to survive and relief agencies have already expressed their concerns about the potential for a humanitarian crisis once war starts.'' The dictator of Iraq is a student of Stalin, using murder as a tool of terror and control within his own cabinet, and within his own army, and even within his own family. On Saddam Hussein's orders, opponents have been decapitated, wives and mothers of political opponents have been systematically raped as a method of intimidation, and political prisoners have been forced to watch their own children being tortured. Jensen: ``All of that and more was going on while Iraq was a `valued ally' of the United States--hence the hypocrisy of the next few sentences.'' America believes that all people are entitled to hope and human rights--to the non-negotiable demands of human dignity. People everywhere prefer freedom to slavery; prosperity to squalor; self-government to the rule of terror and torture. America is a friend to the people of Iraq. Anthony Arnove, editor of the book Iraq Under Siege: ``But the people of Iraq have good reason to feel otherwise. As Nichols Kristof of the New York Times noted in his October 4 report from Baghdad, `while ordinary Iraqis were very friendly toward me, they were enraged at the U.S. after 11 years of economic sanctions. . . . Worse, U.S. bombing of water treatment plants, difficulties importing purification chemicals like chlorine (which can be used for weapons), and shortages of medicines led to a more than doubling of infant mortality, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.' Another war on Iraq--this time, a `pre- emptive' attack aimed at `regime change'--will lead to more civilian casualties and damage to Iraq's infrastructure. And Iraqis are right to worry that the regime Washington installs, in violation of their right to self-determination, will be one that serves U.S. interests, not their own. We should recall the impact of the last war. In the words of Gulf War veteran Anthony Swofford, a former Marine corporal, writing in the New York Times, October 2, `From the ground, I witnessed the savage results of American air superiority: tanks and troop carriers turned upside down and ripped inside out; rotten, burned, half-buried bodies littering the desert like the detritus of years--not weeks--of combat.' We should be skeptical of Bush's stated concern for the Iraqi people. His real interests in this war are not the Iraq people, or defending Americans from attack, but expanding U.S. hegemony in the Middle East.'' Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us. When these demands are met, the first and greatest benefit will come to Iraqi men, women, and children. The oppression of Kurds, Assyrians, Turkomans, Shi'a, Sunnis and others will be lifted. The long captivity of Iraq will end, and an era of new hope will begin. Jennings: ``The president has repeatedly claimed, `We have no quarrel with the Iraqi people.' In his speech to the nation on Oct. 7, he said, `America is a friend of the people of Iraq.' Try telling that to a friend of mine in Baghdad who walked out of his house following a U.S. bomb attack to find his neighbor's head rolling down the street; or to a taxi driver I met whose four year old child shook uncontrollably for three days following Clinton's 1998 `Monicagate' bombing diversion. Try telling it to the mother of Omran ibn Jwair, whom I met in the village of Toq al-Ghazzalat after a U.S. missile killed her 13 year old son while he was tending sheep in the field. Try telling it to the hundreds of mothers I have seen crying over their dying babies in Iraqi hospitals, and to the hundreds of thousands of parents who have actually lost their infant children due to the cruel U.S. blockade, euphemistically called `sanctions.' Are the Iraqi people supposed to rejoice now that a new war is being forced upon them by their so-called `friends'? It is understandable that people are frightened following the disastrous attacks of September 11. But fear is not a good reason to stop thinking. In fact, when we are in danger is when clear thinking is needed most of all.'' Iraq is a land rich in culture, resources, and talent. Freed from the weight of oppression, Iraq's people will be able to share in the progress and prosperity of our time. If military action is necessary, the United States and our allies will help the Iraqi people rebuild their economy, and create the institutions of liberty in a unified Iraq at peace with its neighbors. Later this week the United States Congress will vote on this matter. I have asked Congress to authorize the use of America's military, if it proves necessary, to enforce U.N. Security Council demands. John Berg, director of graduate studies of the government department at Suffolk University: ``Our Constitution makes it clear that Congress, not the President, is to `declare war'-- that is, make the decision that war is necessary in a given situation. For Congress to delegate this determination to the President would be an abdication of its Constitutional responsibility. Zunes: ``According to the articles 41 and 42 of the United Nations charter, this can only be done if the U.N. Security Council finds the violator in material breach of the resolution, determines all non-military means of enforcement have been exhausted, and specifically authorizes the use of force. Otherwise, it will be illegal. Members of Congress would therefore be obliged to vote against it since-- according to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution-- international treaties such as the U.N. Charter are the supreme law of the land. Furthermore, if the United States can invade Iraq for its violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions, then Britain could invade Morocco, France could invade Turkey, Russia could invade Israel, etc.'' Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable. The resolution will tell the United Nations, and all nations, that America speaks with one voice and is determined to make the demands of the civilized world mean something. Congress will also be sending a message to the dictator in Iraq: that his only choice is full compliance--and the time remaining for that choice is limited. Members of Congress are nearing an historic vote, and I am confident they will fully consider the facts and their duties. The attacks of September 11 showed our country that vast oceans no longer protect us from danger. Before that tragic date, we had only hints of al Qaeda's plans and designs. Today in Iraq, we see a threat whose outlines are far more clearly defined--and whose consequences could be far more deadly. Saddam Hussein's actions have put us on notice--and there is no refuge from our responsibilities. We did not ask for this present challenge, but we accept it. Like other generations of Americans, we will meet the responsibility of defending human liberty against violence and aggression. By our resolve, we will give strength to others. By our courage, we will give hope to others. By our actions, we will secure the peace, and lead the world to a better day. Phyllis Bennis, author of the just-released book Before and After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies: ``President Bush's speech ignored Congress, and instead was aimed at U.S. public opinion (where his support is dwindling) and international allies in the U.N. (where the U.S. is significantly isolated). It was designed to divert attention from the real reason for this coming war: oil and empire. It is a war designed to rewrite the political map of the Middle East, and is not dependent on the particular threat posed by a particular dictator. The crimes of the Iraqi regime are serious and longstanding--back to the days of massive U.S. economic and military support, and U.S. provision of the biological seed stock for the anthrax and other germs President Bush warned us about. But launching a massive bombing campaign against Baghdad, a city of more than 5 million inhabitants--grandmothers, kindergarten classes, teenagers--will not secure human rights for those living and dying under those bombs.`` Thank you, and good night.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I missed some votes yesterday because I was traveling. I left for Iraq last week to get a better understanding of how a preemptive U.S. military strike against Iraq will affect the Iraqi people, and to encourage the Iraqi leadership to allow United Nations weapons inspectors into the country. Had I been able to, I would have voted: ``yes'' on H.R. 4793; ``yes'' on H.R. 3450; ``yes'' on H. Res. 398; ``yes'' on H. Con. Res. 291; ``yes'' on H.R. 4013; ``yes'' on H.R. 4014; ``yes'' on H. Res. 399; ``yes'' on H.R. 5091; ``yes'' on H. Res. 561; ``yes'' on H. Con. Res. 484; ``yes'' on H. Con. Res. 451; ``yes'' on H. Res. 522; ``yes'' on H.R. 556; ``yes'' on H.R. 5472; ``yes'' on H.R. 5469; ``yes'' on H.R. 4125; ``yes'' on H. Res. 417; ``yes'' on H. Res. 538; ``yes'' on H.R. 4851; ``yes'' on H. Res. 530; ``yes'' on H.R. 4944; ``yes'' on H.R. 4874; ``yes'' on H.R. 4141; ``no'' on H.R. 4968; ``yes'' on H.R. 4129; ``yes'' on H.R. 3802; ``yes'' on H. Con. Res. 425; ``yes'' on H.R. 3813; ``yes'' on H.R. 4830; ``yes'' on H.R. 4692; ``yes'' on H.R. 3534; ``yes'' on H.R. 5125; ``yes'' on H.R. 2426; ``yes'' on H.R. 5303.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I guess the chickens have come home to roost. A long time ago, the first thing we did practically in this Congress was pass a big tax bill. Some of us stood down here and said, hey, we ought to figure out what we need to spend before we decide we are going to give a lot of stuff away; but the leadership on the other side of the aisle said, do not worry, there is plenty of money. There is no problem. Just trust us. Well, there are a lot of hospitals and a lot of schools and a lot of people out there trusting them, and what they see is that they have given it all away, and they will not even admit it. If they would just get up and say, we have made a mistake, we should not have done that, we should maybe go back and rethink what we did. But I understand their theory. Their theory is when they make a mistake, just keep saying it and pushing it, even if it does not make any sense. They were out here yesterday on the marriage tax penalty. They have been out here every week with something. What really ought to aggravate the American people in the way they have handled this budget, when I come in here, I fly in here from Seattle. I get here at 4 o'clock on a Tuesday for a vote on a couple of post offices being renamed on Tuesday night. Then we have a little something on Wednesday, and on Thursday we are out, and I am on that plane at 5 o'clock. I am on the ground less than 48 hours in this town. If Members call that a good week's work for a good week's pay, I have to tell the Members something: Most of the people in the world have to at least work 40 hours. They cannot even keep their people here to work on the problem, but they would rather say, let us just have a continuing resolution. It is going so well, let us let it go on. Why do we not just pass a continuing resolution until the first of March and give up this charade. What they are going to do is 1 week at a time, and then they are going to take the next one, which will be up to October 18. Then they will say, well, we ought to do it after the election, so we will do the 17th of November; and then, of course, well, we will do December 15; and then we will come in on January 10; and then come in again, and we will finally get to work in February. They ought to be ashamed of themselves that they do not bring the bills out here. Bring them out here, and we will see. They should bring out whatever they can agree on. Since they do not want to talk to us about what they are bringing out, they should bring out their best shot and put it on the floor here. But no, they want to talk about Iraq, and they want to talk about a lot of other things, but they do not do the business of the House. We ought to vote this rule down and bring out the bills.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I missed some votes because I was traveling. I left for Iraq yesterday to get a better understanding of how a preemptive US military strike against Iraq will affect the Iraqi people. Had I been able to, I would have voted: No on H. Res. 547 (Rollcall vote #413); no on H. Res. 540 (Rollcall vote #414); no on H. Res. 544 (Rollcall vote #415).

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I missed some votes because I was traveling. I left for Iraq on Wednesday to get a better understanding of how a preemptive U.S. military strike against Iraq will affect the Iraqi people. Had I been able to, I would have voted: ``No'' on H. Res. 552 (rollcall vote No. 416). ``No'' on Approving the Journal (rollcall vote No. 417). ``Yes'' on the Motion to Instruct Conferees on H.R. 3295 (rollcall vote No. 418). ``No'' on H. Res. 553 (rollcall vote No. 419). ``Yes'' on the Motion to Recommit H.R. 4600 with Instructions (rollcall vote No. 420). ``No'' on final passage of H.R. 4600 (rollcall vote No. 421). ``Yes'' on H.R. 2215 (rollcall vote No. 422). ``Yes'' on H. Res. 111 (rollcall vote No. 423).

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I cannot help thinking that we are moving back to the 16th century. This is the most far-reaching assault on women that I have ever seen in this House. I want to put a human face on this. In 1963, I was an intern at the Buffalo General Hospital. I dealt with two poor women who had back-alley abortions. One had eight children, one had six. They were done with coat hangers, and both those women died. I still see their faces. At the same time that was going on in Buffalo at the place I now live, Seattle, women could go down to a travel agency, buy a ticket to Japan, have a day's shopping and an abortion, and come home. Now, that is the circumstance in 1961, 1962, 1963 in this country. For us to be moving back in this direction, overriding Roe v. Wade, and the Hyde amendment, is simply a step back into the dark ages and it is absolutely wrong. This is not a women's issue; this is a human issue. Those 14 children in Buffalo who grew up without their mothers because their mothers could not have full reproductive services in a decent hospital in a major city in the United States are what Members are saying is all right for all of the children of this country. Leave no children behind, my President has said. Well, this is guaranteed to leave children behind if we step back this far into the past. I urge Members to vote against this rule.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, as Congress grapples with how to best create a Department of Homeland Security that will meet our nation's security needs, I'd like to include in the Congressional Record comments that Professor David Yamada made regarding this issue. Mr. Yamada is a co-founder of the Workers' Rights Committee of Americans for Democratic Action and a professor of law at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. I share many of Mr. Yamada's concerns. (By Professor David Yamada) In the hours and weeks that followed the September 11 attacks, thousands of unionized police officers and firefighters representing the diversity of America secured the damaged sites and sifted through the horrible destruction. Few events in American history have more strongly attested to the value of having dedicated public employees on the front lines of our civil defense network. Nevertheless, the Bush Administration's proposed Homeland Security legislation threatens to make second class citizens of federal airport security workers who are hired to screen passengers and to inspect packages and baggage. If Congress approves the bill in its current form, newly hired airport screening personnel could be denied all basic labor protections. These include the rights to join a union, to negotiate over wages and working conditions, to be free from discrimination and harassment, and to be protected against retaliation for whistle blowing. This very real possibility is rooted in a little-known loophole in the recently enacted Aviation and Transportation Security Act. The loophole allows the Department of Transportation, ``notwithstanding any other provision of law,'' to ``employ, appoint, discipline, terminate, and fix the compensation, terms, and conditions of employment'' for all federal airport screening personnel. Read literally, this allows the DOT to fix summarily all terms of employment for airport security workers, without regard to any existing federal labor law protections. The recently proposed Homeland Security bill would transfer the airport screening functions specified in the Aviation and Transportation Security Act to the new Department of Homeland Security. The bill further provides that the Secretary of Homeland Security will be granted all powers previously accorded to the federal agencies absorbed into the new Department. This means that the Secretary will inherit the same alarming carte blanche authority originally granted to the DOT to unconditionally mandate all terms of employment for airport security screeners. This short, seemingly insignificant provision carries huge implications. First, it obviously means that thousands of new federal employees could be denied their basic labor rights at the whim of a single Cabinet member. In addition, it would send an unprecedented message that fundamental worker protections, by their very existence, are inconsistent with the goal of national security. Indeed, if airport baggage screeners can be required to give up these civil rights under the guise of national security, can police officers, firefighters, and even privately employed transportation workers be far behind? Finally, stripping these employees of their labor protections would defeat the goal of hiring a skilled and motivated workforce for this important security function. Recall that one of the original concerns in light of September 11 was that, because airport screening workers were so poorly paid, the security companies had trouble attracting qualified personnel, and that many of these workers reported for duty exhausted from working other jobs to pay their bills. How many qualified, trustworthy individuals will apply for and remain in a job in which giving up virtually all basic legal protections is a condition of employment? Hard-won legal protections for workers should not be sacrificed in the name of national security without valid, convincing reasons for doing so. In this case, the manner in which airport security workers have been put at risk of losing their rights smacks of an insidious attempt to ``sneak one through'' Congress, taking undue advantage of the public's understandable fears about the safety of air travel. Because the Aviation and Transportation Security Act already spells out in detail the necessary skill levels and security clearances for airport screeners, there is no principled reason also to require a wholesale removal of their labor safeguards. Consideration of the Homeland Security bill now provides Congress with an opportunity to undo the hidden damage of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. In the aftermath of September 11, President Bush stood in solidarity with police officers and firefighters at Ground Zero. Against a background of terrible tragedy, he symbolically affirmed the importance of rank-and-file public workers in American society. Hopefully the letter of the proposed Homeland Security law will be amended to reflect the spirit of that vital gesture.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, there is probably no issue that this House will deal with of the gravity of the one we are facing. Sending this country to war, putting our young people, men and women, in harm's way is a heavy responsibility. It cannot be done on the basis of misinformation. Some of us who serve here served in the Vietnam era. I dealt with casualties for 2 years coming back from Vietnam. The young men and young women of the Seventh Fleet came to Long Beach Naval Station, where I was the chief psychiatrist. I saw what happens to people in war, so I do not come out here with an easy heart to say, well, let us go off and do this and do that. I think it has to be thought through very carefully what this country is doing, because if we put our people on the line, they have to know what they are doing. If we say to the world that we can make a preemptive strike, we do not like what that person is doing, and we are not sure exactly what he is doing, but we are pretty sure we do not like what he is doing so we are going to take him out, when this country moves to that point, we are moving into a very dangerous period. I want to read a quote. It was not said in this body, it was said on the other side: ``I believe that history will record that we have made a great mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the United States. I believe this resolution to be a historic mistake. I believe that within the next century, future generations will look with dismay and great disappointment upon a Congress which is now about to make such a historic mistake.'' Now, we went to war in Vietnam with a voice vote in the House of Representatives. No recorded votes. In the Senate they had a vote. Two Members spoke against it and voted against it. One of them was this speech I just read by Wayne Morse of Oregon. Another Senator voted for it but asked a question. He said, ``I do not want to do this because I think we are going to wind up with 500,000 troops on the ground.'' They went down and asked President Johnson and President Johnson called Gaylord Nelson and said, ``Gaylord, for heaven's sake you know I am not going to do anything like that.'' He lied to him. He lied to him. And when people tell me they have facts, that they know that there are weapons out there, there are nuclear weapons, that, oh, the United States is in grave danger, we knew what Saddam Hussein was doing with those weapons when he turned them on the Iranians. We were encouraging him. We did not like this bunch over in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini and all that bunch. So we said, Hey, Saddam, go get him and we will give you some weapons, and we knew what he was doing. When this country decides they are going to take out a leader somewhere, one ought to look at history. There was a country called Iran, and the leader was a guy named Mossadegh. He had been elected by the people. He was the Prime Minister elected in Iran. The United States Government did not like him because his politics were kind of a little bit to the wrong direction, whatever that was. So they decided to take him out and install a king. They brought back the Shah of Iran and put him on the throne. So in 1979 things erupted there. Somebody said to me, Well, gee, Jim, we got away with 25 free years. Is that the kind of foreign policy this country wants to pursue? Do we want to say we are going to go to any country and we are going to take out whatever is there and put in our guy and then we will use him? The reason we did not like Mossadegh, the reason we do not like Saddam Hussein, it all has to do with oil, who has control of the oil. Mossadegh was talking about nationalizing. Saddam did. This is not an issue for us to do a regime change, simply on oil. We must be careful.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and to the bill which underlies it. I just came from the Committee on the Budget, on which I sit, and listened to Mr. Greenspan tell us about the chaos in our economy, and he is talking about a Congress that has abandoned fiscal discipline. Essentially what he said was this Republican Congress in this 40th act of the fiscal follies of 2001 and 2002 has absolutely decided to eat their dessert before they eat their vegetables. You have been doing it for 2 solid years. You passed the tax cuts, but you cannot pass a budget. You have given all the goodies away and you cannot pass the budget. That is why we are not anywhere near completion here. This private school voucher is just one more example of the same stuff. The President has clapped himself on the back, and all the Members have, about ``we passed No Child Left Behind,'' and that promised an increase of 15 percent funding in education, but the President's budget only had 2.8 percent increase in spending. Why did you promise 15 percent and then the President puts out a budget for less than a fifth of that? That does not make any sense. You are leaving kids behind, and we are going to give you an opportunity to change your priorities. This picture has on it some of what we want to do in the motion to recommit. You can take the same money that you are giving away and throwing out there for people to buy gym shoes and TVs and whatever they want as long as they say it is for education. That is all they have to do is say it is for education. You take that same money and you can do something for public schools. With $7 billion you can leverage $25 billion of construction. I put these pictures up here because I want you to understand we are not talking about theoretical stuff. We are talking about drinking fountains, we are talking about broken steps, we are talking about rotten ceilings in schools. We send kids to those public schools and say, ``Why do the teachers not teach them well? I think people ought to have a choice to go to a private school to get away from this.'' Because we will not put the money into something that makes real sense. This voucher, when we questioned the people from Treasury and said what can one use this money for, it was appalling. You can do it for broadband access for your TV or maybe you do not have a TV; so because you want your computer to go through the TV, you can buy a TV, one of those nice flat-screen ones and you can deduct the whole thing. You can buy gym shoes, some of those Michael Jordan $100 gym shoes, because your kid has to take gym and that is related to gym. Baby-sitters or maybe a cab ride to school. The school says we are not going to have any buses and you have got to get your kid there any way you can. All you have got to do is call a cab and deduct it from your income tax. If this makes sense when we are putting the children of the United States in these kinds of schools, this is San Diego, but I could bring some from Seattle, and I bet there is not a Member on this floor that could not bring pictures just like this from their district, and yet we have a bill. It has been in the Congress. It was introduced. It has 228 signatures. That is more than half the House of Representatives, and we cannot get the chairman to even have a hearing. Now tell me, are we going to leave any children behind? It is pretty obvious we are because we have to continue the tax giveaway follies. Vote no on the rule, vote yes on the motion to recommit, and vote no on the bill.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, has the Parliamentarian made a decision on the amendment which is going to be offered later in the day?

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Becerra).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. It is nice to be back here on the first day of school to witness the 27th act of the Republican budget follies of 2001-2002. The gentleman from Missouri talks very openly about the No Child Must Be Left Behind bill, and we all clapped and patted ourselves on the back. It authorized an increase in the budget of 15 percent for children and education. But then there was the budget, the real honest-to-God budget. That was 2.8 percent. Promising 15 percent and then giving them 2.8, right? And meanwhile come down here and shovel more money out the back door in tax breaks. You call it arcane reasoning. Well, we did not want to break the budget. That is why you did not make it permanent in the first place. If you had passed this thing in perpetuity, you would have broken the budget, and it never would have passed the Senate. That is why you put that sunset clause in. But the fascinating thing is that the Bush budget that says it cares about education in the public schools cuts 50 programs, including civics and art and history education. It cuts school counselors and technology for teachers. That is in the public schools. We do not want to fund the public schools. We just want to figure out how to give everybody a voucher, forever. We are going to boost the amount from $500 a year to $2,000; and we are going to add that everybody now is permanent. Higher education, high school, middle school, elementary school, home school, everybody can take their money and go outside the public school system. Yet 90 percent of the kids in this country go to the public schools. So why is our focus not on putting money in the public schools? Even more interesting and the reason I started with this talk about the budget, 2 years ago, a little less than 2 years ago, we came out here and we said we have $5.6 trillion in surplus. And we could do anything. We can give enormous tax breaks. We can do all these things. But even the Republicans now have to admit that their own Congressional Budget Office says that this year we are going to be $157 billion in debt, in deficit. That is counting all the Social Security money. All that money, all that talk about lockboxes and we are going to protect Social Security. I can remember listening to hundreds of speeches from the other side that would be saying today, ``You're raiding the Social Security money.'' But suddenly we do not hear any of that. We have the Congressional Budget Office say we are only going to be $157 billion in debt. They do not point out that the biggest chunk of that is money coming from Social Security. Maybe next year it is going to get better. That would be right, right? Well, it is only going to be $145 billion in deficit. Yet you want to come out here and pass a bill that puts another $5 billion out in perpetuity. You do not know what is happening in the stock market. Everybody tells me it is getting better. The economy is coming back. It is not coming back in the Northwest. We have got the highest unemployment we have had in 15 years. So when people are saying, Oh, well, let's give all these permanent tax breaks because it's coming back, where is the proof of that? Who believes the Secretary of the Treasury? We do not have a serious financial leader in this executive branch. Nobody that the world believes. They go out and make speeches and the market drops. So explain to me how you can continue to give money away permanently. The funny thing about this, of course, is it does not take effect for 8 years, right? Put it in today, people will forget about it; but it will bite out there someplace down the road. It is a very clever strategy. Put in the idea with the sunset, come back a year later and say, well, we are only extending what we did last year. That is deceptive. We are in financial difficulties in this country. We should not be passing this kind of legislation at this point when we have not done the education budget. We have not even done any of that yet for the public schools, and you want to give people money to go to the private schools.

Mr. McDERMOTT. I hope they will all vote against it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.