Cynthia McKinney

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, today is the third anniversary of the murder of Rachel Corrie, an American who was crushed to death by Israel's American-manufactured Caterpillar bulldozers. Rachel was protesting the Israeli Army's illegal bulldozing of Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip. The Corrie family has filed suit against Caterpillar, charging it with knowingly selling machines used to violate human rights. From the Rachel Corrie website I found a link to these lyrics by Ten Foot Pole entitled, ``Rachel Corrie.'' ``Rachel Corrie'' You heard of Rachel Corrie? The press won't tell her story Caught between a house and bulldozer She found out that Israel Hates gardens and it will kill Americans who help rebuild the Gaza Strip. Let's pretend that everything will be OK It's not our fault let's look the other way And go to films or dance lessons or baseball games at night and trust elected leaders to choose right I hurt for Rachel's father To bury his young daughter And her belief in human goodness He taught her to fight violence Now all that's left is silence And the memory of her dignity Let's pretend . . . Rachel I hope you find justice or even a garden where anyone can grow some food in peace No guns, no need to fight. No poor, no black no white, Heaven, you deserve a break from misery Thanks to Maarten Joostens (hiprock_cafe@hotmail.com) for these lyrics.

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Pentagon announced that it is returning $288 out of $300 million it was holding while investigating Halliburton for overcharging, even though Halliburton was previously caught overcharging the Pentagon by $27 million for meals for our troops. Mr. Speaker, even as tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina survivors face eviction due to FEMA, the United States Government is handing hundreds of millions of dollars to a company which has been plagued by allegations and admissions of fraud, waste, abuse, bribery and kickbacks. The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq was itself unable to account for $9 billion, with over a billion of this reportedly having been lost to Halliburton. Today, I urge Congress to establish a permanent war profiteering committee modeled after the Truman Commission after the Second World War. Before this Congress writes the President another blank check, we need to investigate the gross incompetence and even corruption that exists with this administration.

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my remarks this afternoon by congratulating first of all the people of Haiti, a small, very poor country that is our neighbor, but a country whose people still believe in the power of democracy. They still believe in the power of the vote. And so despite all odds, despite all intimidation, the people of Haiti overwhelmingly showed up at the polls and they voted. And not only did they show up at the polls and vote; they demanded that their vote be counted. Now, we understand that there were about 85,000 ballots that had nothing on them. They were probably ready to have something put on them. But the people of Haiti demanded that the vote that was actually voted and the results of that actual vote count be the results of the election. And I am also down here this afternoon to congratulate not only the people of Haiti, who prevailed, but to congratulate Rene Preval, who was their candidate of choice. Now, the people of Haiti have to be congratulated because they have gone to the polls over and over and over and over again. They have gone to the polls. A few years ago, when I had just come to Congress, they went to the polls, before I got to Congress, they went to the polls and they elected a former priest, a man of the cloth, a man of the community, of the neighborhood, a man of the poor to represent them. And hired thugs who were on the CIA payroll, whose leader enjoys the solace and solitude of America's neighborhoods, he should not even be here, helped to oust President Aristide. And so the hopes and aspirations of the people of Haiti, who were finally able to throw off the yoke of American-imposed and -supported dictatorship, saw their hopes and their dreams vanish once again. But thank goodness there was an administration in Washington, DC and there was a change in the face of the Democratic Caucus and so Members of the Congressional Black Caucus would not stand to allow this outrage to continue. And so working in concert with the Clinton administration, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus worked day in and day out and successfully saw the return of Jean Bertrand Aristide to power. But that was not enough. Because, as soon as Clinton was out of office, and the George W. Bush administration was in office, something else happened, after the people of Haiti voted to renew President Aristide's mandate. And what happened happened 2 years ago. The people of Haiti, in free, fair and transparent elections, elected Jean Bertrand Aristide to another term in office. U.S. Armed Forces showed up at his house and took him and his family away, put them on a plane, destination unknown. Kind of like what happened with the Katrina survivors. So once again, the people of Haiti saw that when they went to the polls, participated in the process, put their full faith and confidence in the power of the ballot box, ballot box, not bullets, that bullets from some place else could come and dash their dreams. So now former President Aristide lives in South Africa. I have to acknowledge the tremendous role that was played by my sister Congresswoman, Ms. Waters. Here she is. Now I am all discombobulated because my sister is here. I will let her tell her story. Maxine, can I invite you to please tell the story of how you saved a little piece of America's honor by making sure that Jean Bertram Aristide was at least safely delivered to his final destination. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my sister.

Ms. McKINNEY. I did not make a personal reference, so I will move on with my time. I would commend this article to this Congress: ``Rumsfeld and Cheney Revive Their 70's Terror Playbook,'' and everything I have said is quoted right here in this article. Now, I think the last thing this Congress wants to do is try to snuff out the right of people to speak. The next thing I would like to draw to your attention is an excerpt from a book. The name of the book is ``War is a Racket.'' It is written by Major General Smedley Butler, and this is how it goes: War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the very many. Out of war, a few people make huge fortunes. In the world war, because this was written at the time of World War I, a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the world war. That many admitted to their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns, no one knows. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dugout? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up by a few. Munitions makers, bankers, ship builders, manufacturers, meat packers, speculators, they would fare well. Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends. But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers, their sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children? What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits? Yes, what does it profit the Nation? But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill. If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad, or visit any of the veterans hospitals in the United States where there are thousands of the living dead. The very able chief surgeon told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home. Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded. They were made over. They were made to about face, to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and through mass psychology they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed. Then, suddenly, we discharge them and told them to make another about face. This time they had to do their own readjustment, without mass psychology, without officers aid and advice and without nationwide propaganda. We did not need them anymore, so we scattered them about without any speeches or parades. Too many of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed mentally because they could not make the final about face alone. In the government hospitals, these boys are in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys do not even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces. Physically, they are in good shape. Mentally, they are gone. There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. Another step is necessary in this fight to smash the war racket. To summarize, three steps must be taken to smash the war racket. One, we must take the profit out of war. Two, we must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war. And three, we must limit our military forces to defense purposes. He says home defense purposes. This is an excerpt from Smedley Butler's War is a Racket. Now, juxtapose what this man of war said to the drumbeats of war that we hear in our media now, that are emanating from high places within this administration, people who have not borne the rifle, who have not been in war. In fact, when America called them because America needed them, they were full of deferments. And yet they want to put a young man like Kevin Benderman who does not want to kill children and women and innocent people in Iraq anymore in the brig, and they would tell our country that we need to prepare for a long war. We do not prepare for a long war. Certainly not George Bush's war. And if Tom Hartman is right in his assessment, we do not need to prepare for Dick Cheney's war either. We have had some discussion in this body about war, and one of my colleagues from Pennsylvania did what Major General Smedley Butler said we ought to do. He visited the young men and women who have been asked to fight this war, who are on the front lines of Donald Rumsfeld's long war. There he was compelled to make a change, a change in his conviction, that perhaps this is not the right war for America; and he came back to this Congress and he said so. I am talking about my colleague from Pennsylvania, Mr. Murtha. We need to really think about where we are as a country. We need to think about who we are as a country, as Americans. What does it mean to be an American? Look at the people of Haiti who have nothing but their hopes and aspirations in democracy. And despite dictatorship and coup d'etat and dictatorship and coup d'etat again, they went to the polls and they demanded that their votes be counted. We, too, have, in this country, the opportunity to express ourselves at the ballot box. The way I stand here is the way all 535 Members of Congress stand here, because people choose to participate or people choose not to. In my case, I was put out of Congress because I spoke up about September 11. And the people of the Fourth Congressional District of Georgia said, we are not going to stand for that, and they sent me back, showing the power of the vote, as the people of Haiti have demonstrated to the world the power of the vote. I would hope all Americans would value the power of the vote and exercise it.

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry. I would like to suspend my special order. The gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) has requested a 5-minute special order.

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I have an hour, so I will yield to the gentlewoman. congratulating rene preval, president-elect of haiti

Ms. McKINNEY. I would like to point out that there were certain Members of Congress who actually traveled with Condoleezza Rice and they came back and said that Condoleezza Rice had promised that there would be some ballot access in Cite Soleil; isn't that correct?

Ms. McKINNEY. I am absolutely blown away by the things that Congresswoman Maxine Waters just said. She reminded us that the French and the Americans and the Canadians, which I did not realize that the Canadians were involved in this, they all got together to oust a duly elected president. But now let me just tell you that from 2000 in Florida this President was not duly elected. I will say that because the election was stolen, and we all know that the election was stolen. And it is interesting that you would use invalid ballots, blank ballots. This is the same mechanism that was used to disenfranchise black people in this country in 2000 in the presidential election. And so now, of course, they surface again in Haiti, invalid ballots, blank ballots. But the people of Haiti took to the streets. They demanded a fair vote count, and they got a fair vote count, and they got a President. I want to thank my sister congresswoman for joining me on the House floor but also for those strong and powerful words. Because she is absolutely right, that it is our responsibility now that the people's voices have been heard and so now we have to respect that. We need to respect that. I want to shift gears for just a moment, and I do not think this poster should present a surprise to anyone as to what I am going to talk about now, and that is Hurricane Katrina. I want to remind people of these images that went all over the world. The black person who is trying to go through the water for food is looting. That is what Associated Press writes. That is what Associated Press wrote, the black person was looting. Agence France- Press saw these white people, and they were finding bread and soda. Blacks loot; whites find. There is nothing more stark. This is the beginning of the Hurricane Katrina story, and this is the way Hurricane Katrina was portrayed to the American people and throughout the world. We need to question all of the press images from not just Associated Press but every newspaper and on television. What were our administration leaders doing as New Orleans was filling with water? The President was on vacation in Texas at the ranch. The Vice President was on vacation in Wyoming. He was fly fishing. The Secretary of State was visiting New York City and even in the midst of what was happening in New Orleans, she got booed, so the press reports tell us, because she took in a play, and then after she took in a play she went shopping for Ferragamo shoes and bought $7,000 worth, reportedly, of Ferragamo shoes, and then, after that, she decided to play a little tennis. Donald Rumsfeld took in a Padres' game in San Diego, and Michael Chertoff, who is the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, who is charged with taking care of the United States in a time of great trial and stress and catastrophe, stayed at home. So, as a result, the select committee that was formed by this Congress to investigate the government's preparations for and actions during Hurricane Katrina issued a report yesterday. The name of the report, ``A Failure of Initiative.'' It is a huge report. The bottom line is that Secretary Chertoff needs to resign. It is amazing to me to see the Secretary on television through the powers of C-SPAN doing an intellectual dance, trying to defend the indefensible. What happened to the people of the gulf States region and what is happening to them today is indefensible. And if thousands of families are being kicked out of their temporary homes, their temporary housing which was the hotel rooms, that is the responsibility at the end of the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security who said, okay, we will let FEMA go ahead with that call. Of course, the President bears responsibility, too, and he has accepted responsibility, but I have not yet heard Secretary Chertoff accept responsibility. Another sad fact about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath is that in the metropolitan Atlanta area we have about 60- to 70,000 Katrina survivors. They want to go back home, many of them, but there is so much uncertainty because, as the congresswoman from Florida said earlier, there is still uncertainty as to how the Hurricane Katrina survivors are going to be treated. I have introduced legislation that will force the EPA to look at tests and make public the environmental circumstances under which people will be returning, in particular to New Orleans. It is a shame that we would have to have legislation in order to get the EPA to do its job, but, right now, structures are being tested for habitability on their structural soundness but not on their environmental soundness, and we have that toxic sludge that is everywhere. So I would ask that this Congress look at the omnibus piece of legislation that was dropped in and signed by all of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus which addresses all aspects of the problem faced by those Katrina survivors. In addition, I find it curious that the panel that produced this, what some people are calling, scathing report was boycotted by the Democrats. Well, it was boycotted by the Democratic leadership. I chose to participate in it because there is one thing about participating in Congress. We are elected, we come here, we write, and we speak, and everything that we write and speak for the Congressional Record will survive as long as there is a Congressional Record and academicians and scholars, lawyers can search the Congressional Record to understand the environment within which certain actions were taken, certain legislation was passed. Attorneys and judges all rely on the Congressional Record, as well as scholars and academicians and historians and archivists. So the power of the Congressional Record is one that must not be thrown away. I participated in the hearing and my remarks are included in the panel's report, but the leadership was suggesting that, instead, we needed an independent commission, like the 9/11 Commission. I do not have a problem with an independent commission, but to use the 9/11 Commission as a paragon of an example of how you ferret out the truth and find out what actually happened in a tragic event I think is not appropriately stated. Because yesterday in the Armed Services Committee we had three people who appeared before the Armed Services Committee in an Able Danger hearing. Able Danger is the data mining program that has been in the newspaper a lot because of the persistence of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), one of our colleagues. These experts from the military and from intelligence said that if they had been allowed to do their job, their work product could quite possibly have prevented September 11. It provided the American intelligence community with the tools necessary to understand what was happening to our country in real time, but the program was shut down, and when efforts were made to brief the 9/11 Commission on what this Able Danger work product had demonstrated and had shown, their work was denigrated. Their work product was denigrated, and they were not given an opportunity to present their findings to the Commission as directly. It has been said in public statements that their work was historically insignificant. Yet we have three people in open session yesterday say to us that if they had been allowed to do their job, to do their work, that quite possibly September 11 could have been prevented. And instead of grasping on to this information, the staff of the 9/11 Commission said that these people were not credible and that the results that they touted were historically insignificant and, therefore, this program was ignored. Now I do not know why it was ignored, but the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) has had a lot to say about Able Danger and what it meant to our country and why it was shut down. I would encourage people to pay attention to Able Danger and the hearings that the House Armed Services Committee is having. Also, there was one other thing very sad that came out of the hearing that we had yesterday, and that is poor whistle-blower treatment. In fact, whistle-blower mistreatment and all kinds of allegations were made against average, ordinary Americans who had extraordinary jobs that put them in a position to know something, and because they saw something was wrong and they tried to inform the higher ups that something was wrong, they were personally mistreated at the workplace and away from the workplace, even comments made about their personal and private lives. What that says to us is that we have got to do a better job in this place of allowing the truth to come out. I remember when I was in Congress during my previous tenure, and at that time we were working very hard on U.S. foreign policy in Africa. We wanted the truth to come out about the real events surrounding the Rwandan genocide. It seemed that everybody who was associated with not telling the truth, or making sure that we didn't get access to the truth, got a promotion. I have become fond of saying, it seems that it is only in Washington, DC where you can be incompetent and get a promotion. Anywhere else in America, if you are incompetent, you lose your job, but not so here in this country. As we contemplate the enormity of what the Able Danger panelists told us in open testimony yesterday, as we contemplate as a country the enormity of this revelation, let us also weigh it against what is happening now. What is happening now is that the war drums are beating once again. I have a constituent who is over the age of 40, and he has been told he has got to report for duty to go to Iraq. Over 40. The drumbeats for war are sounding, not just against Iraq now, but also against Iran and Syria. In the face of these beating drums, the backdrop is that this administration is being investigated. This administration being investigated has two ongoing investigations. The Department of Justice just opened another one today, which makes this the third investigation, the third investigation on wiretapping. This administration is being investigated and has drawn indictments and a guilty plea. The Vice President's former chief of staff, Lewis Libby, has been indicted, and Lawrence Franklin, who is being investigated by Paul McNulty, has been sentenced for 12 years for passing classified material over to another country. This administration is being investigated on how we got into the first war, and now they want us to go to a second war, to open another front on this war. It is about time that we say no more war. No more war, Mr. Bush. I also want to, as I remember the gentleman in my district who is over 40 years of age who has been told that he has got to report for duty in Iraq, remember Kevin Benderman, whose wife frantically contacted my office asking for help for her husband. Kevin Benderman went to Iraq one time. He was asked to do things that he thought as a human being went against his conscience. We know that collateral damage is not just a number: 100,000; 200,000. It is people. It is little boys and little girls. It is women. Kevin Benderman said, I am not going to kill innocent people. Don't ask me to do that. I have done it once. Once is too much. He decided that he would apply for conscientious objector status. Well, Kevin Benderman is in the brig because he did not want to kill innocent little girls and little boys and women and men in Iraq. He is in the brig. Last weekend, there was an action to free Kevin Benderman. It's a shame. I didn't expect to take all of my time, but I was pleased that my sister from California chose to come down and say a few words of congratulations to the people of Haiti and to the new President-elect, Rene Preval. I was clicking around on the computer, and I came across a very interesting article written by Thom Hartmann, and it can be found on Common Dreams at commondreams.org. The title of it is ``Rumsfeld and Cheney Revive Their 70's Terror Playbook.'' Basically what they say in this article, which I am going to submit for the Record, is that when they were in office before, this dynamic duo decided to cook up an idea of Soviet military dominance to frighten the American people and justify huge defense contracts, or the huge defense budget, which then would result in defense contracts. Let me just read. They said that the Soviets had a new secret weapon of mass destruction. They succeeded in recreating an atmosphere of fear in the United States, and making themselves and their defense contractor friends richer than most of the kingdoms of the world. Trillions of dollars and years later, it was proven that they had been wrong all along, and the CIA had been right. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz lied to America in the 1970s about Soviet weapons of mass destruction and the Soviet supersub technology. But the Cold War was good for business and good for the political power of its advocates, from Rumsfeld to Wolfowitz to Cheney, who have all become rich, in part, because of the arms industry. I am going to place this into the Record, because it appears that America has been through this before. [From the Common Dreams News Center, Feb. 13, 2006] Rumsfeld and Cheney Revive Their 70s Terror Playbook (by Thom Hartmann) Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are at it again. Last week, Rumsfeld told the press we should be preparing for ``the Long War,'' saying of the war this administration has stirred up with its attack on Iraq that, ``Just as the Cold War lasted a long time, this war is something that is not going to go away.'' The last time Rumsfeld talked like this was in the 1970s, in response to the danger of peace presented by Richard Nixon. In 1972, President Richard Nixon returned from the Soviet Union with a treaty worked out by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the beginning of a process Kissinger called ``detente.'' On June 1, 1972, Nixon gave a speech in which he said: ``Last Friday, in Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which began in 1945. With this step, we have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear--for our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world.'' But Nixon left amid scandal and Ford came in, and Ford's Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff (Dick Cheney) believed it was intolerable that Americans might no longer be bound by fear. Without fear, how could Americans be manipulated? And how could billions of dollars taken as taxes from average working people be transferred to the companies that Rumsfeld and Cheney--and their cronies-- would soon work for and/or run? Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort--first secretly and then openly--to undermine Nixon's treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear. They did it by claiming that the Soviets had a new secret weapon of mass destruction that the president didn't know about, that the CIA didn't know about, that nobody knew about but them. It was a nuclear submarine technology that was undetectable by current American technology. And, they said, because of this and related-undetectable-technology weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work or have businesses relationships with. The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld's position a ``complete fiction'' and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone. As Dr. Anne Cahn, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1977 to 1980, told the BBC's Adam Curtis for his documentary ``The Power of Nightmares'': ``They couldn't say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn't find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non- acoustic system. They're saying, `we can't find evidence that they're doing it the way that everyone thinks they're doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don't know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.' ``INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Even though there was no evidence. ``CAHN: Even though there was no evidence. ``INTERVIEWER: So they're saying there, that the fact that the weapon doesn't exist . . . ``CAHN: Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist It just means that we haven't found it.'' But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good. Wolfowitz's group, known as ``Team B,'' came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn't depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable with our current technology. It could--within a matter of months--be off the coast of New York City with a nuclear warhead. Although Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld's assertions of this powerful new Soviet WMD was unproven--they said the lack of proof proved the ``undetectable'' sub existed--they nonetheless used their charges to push for dramatic escalations in military spending to selected defense contractors, a process that continued through the Reagan administration. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz helped re-organized a group--The Committee on the Present Danger--to promote their worldview. The Committee produced documentaries, publications, and provided guests for national talk shows and news reports. They worked hard to whip up fear and encourage increases in defense spending, particularly for sophisticated weapons systems offered by the defense contractors for whom many of these same men would later become lobbyists. And they succeeded in recreating an atmosphere of fear in the United States, and making themselves and their defense contractor friends richer than most of the kingdoms of the world. Trillions of dollars and years later, it was proven that they had been wrong all along, and the CIA had been right. Rumsfeld * * * and Wolfowitz lied to America in the 1970s about Soviet WMDs and the Soviet super-sub technology. Not only do we now know that the Soviets didn't have any new and impressive WMDs, but we also now know that the Soviets were, in fact, decaying from within, ripe for collapse any time, regardless of what the US did--just as the CIA (and anybody who visited Soviet states--as I had--during that time could easily predict). The Soviet economic and political system wasn't working, and their military was disintegrating. But the Cold War was good for business, and good for the political power of its advocates, from Rumsfeld to Wolfowitz to Cheney who have all become rich in part because of the arms industry. Today, making Americans terrified with their so-called ``War On Terror'' is the same strategy, run for many of the same reasons, by the same people. And by hyping it--and then invading Iraq to bring it into fruition--we may well be bringing into reality forces that previously existed only on the margins and with very little power to harm us. Most recently we've learned from former CIA National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia Paul Pillar that, just like in the 1970s, the CIA disagreed in 2002 with Rumsfeld and Cheney about an WMD threat--this time posed by Iraq--even as Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz were telling America how afraid we should be of an eminent ``mushroom cloud.'' We've seen this movie before. The last time, it cost our nation hundreds of billions of dollars, vastly enriched the cronies of these men, and ultimately helped bring Ronald Reagan to power. This time they've added on top of their crony enrichment program the burden of over 2200 dead American servicemen and women, tens of thousands wounded, as many as a hundred thousand dead Iraqis, and a level of worldwide instability not seen since the run-up to World War Two. When Hillary Clinton recently noted that the only political card Republicans are any longer capable of playing is the card of fear, she was spot-on right. They're now even running radio and TV commercials designed to terrorize our children (``Do you have a plan for a terrorist attack?''), the modern reincarnation of ``Duck and Cover.'' Now that former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has confessed that many of the terror alerts that continually popped up during the 2004 election campaign were, as USA Today noted on 10 May 2005, based on ``flimsy evidence'' or were done over his objection at the insistence of ``administration officials,'' it's increasingly clear that the Bush administration itself is the source of much of the ``be afraid!'' terror inflicted on US citizens over the past 5 years. It's time for patriotic Americans of all political affiliations, and for our media, to join with Senator Clinton, former CIA official Paul Pillar, and the many others who are pointing this out, and refuse to allow the Bush administration to inflict terror on Americans--and the world--for political gain. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address in 1932, when Americans were terrorized by the Republican Great Depression, the echoes of World War One, and the rise of Communism in Russia: This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. Indeed, the best hope for the growth of democracy around the world and the survival of individual liberty in the United States is for us to turn away from Rumsfeld's and Cheney's politics of terror and fear, and once again embrace the great vision of this nation, held by her great statesmen and women from 1776 to today. Indeed, they are still among us, as we saw most recently when a brave few senators stood up to filibuster the nomination of Samuel Alito. In this election year, we must redouble our efforts to swell their ranks, to involve ourselves in local and national political groups, and to return America to her destiny as the world's beacon of courage, liberty, and light. Announcement by the Speaker pro tempore The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Conaway.) The gentlewoman will suspend. The gentlewoman is reminded to refrain from personalities toward the Vice President.

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman is not suggesting that I cannot say the name of the Vice President. I am reading an article. Is the gentleman suggesting?

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, when I first heard the news this morning I was at once both shocked and saddened. Although Mrs. King belonged to her children and cousins and nieces and nephews, she also belonged to us--the American people and the family of black people all over the world. When she was alive, there was a sense of comfort. Mother King guarded us, protected us; she helped set this country free when she picked up Martin's cross. I was given the privilege of speaking at this year's Martin Luther King ceremony at Ebenezer Church. Due to illness, she watched the proceedings on the television, not able to be there with us. Our love went out to her then and it does so now. I love the King Family as do we all. Her vision and Martin's vision moved our country forward. In 1963 Dr. King spoke of Stone Mountain, Georgia. I now represent Stone Mountain, Georgia. Change is possible in our country. It is possible for people of conscience to come together and move this country forward. What Mrs. King embodies will not be extinguished. She is our Queen Mother. And we should spend this day reflecting on her life, her legacy, her spirit, and what we will do in our lives to further Martin and Coretta's vision for our beloved community. My condolences to all the members of the King family; and to Martin III, Yolanda, Dexter, and Bernice. In every sense of the word, they were our first family and now we look to the children to wear the family's mantle.

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to extend my condolences to Martin King, III, Yolanda, Dexter, and Bernice King, and to the entire King family. I was shocked and saddened this morning when I heard the news as well. I had the opportunity to speak this year at the Martin Luther King ceremonies held annually at Ebenezer Church. And for the first time in many, many years, our queen mother, Ms. Coretta Scott King, was not there with us personally at the church, but she was looking at the proceedings and the ceremony on television. One thing is fairly clear from the proceedings of the House today, and that is that the King family is loved by this body, by these Members, by the American people, by the African American community in particular, and the progressive community in general because it was the King family and their sacrifices that moved our country forward. They moved America forward. And so, I am so proud to represent Stone Mountain, Georgia, that same Stone Mountain, Georgia, that Dr. King spoke of in 1963, but today it is represented by an African American Congresswoman. It is represented by me. This country can change. This country's leaders can change. This country can raise to its highest ideals if we have the will to do so. And Dr. King and Mrs. King and the King family continue to shine the light on America finding that will to do the best that it can do, to be the best that it can be. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from the U.S. Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen). (Mrs. CHRISTENSEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald).

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support a bill that is close to my heart as well as the hearts of many others in the 4th Congressional District of Georgia. That is, H.R. 2099, the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area Act. It would establish Arabia Mountain as a National Heritage Area, a recognition that is long overdue. Arabia Mountain, a hidden treasure in its own right, is a place where natural, cultural, historic and recreational resources are intricately woven together to form an interconnected, nationally unique landscape. A true Georgia treasure--and an American one, too. Arabia Mountain spans 4,000 acres and three counties. Arabia Mountain is part of an area in eastern Metropolitan Atlanta that has been linked to human settlement and activity for thousands of years. This area not only includes the mountain, but also lakes, rivers, quarries, marked trails, and farmland in the surrounding area. The history of human settlement in this region is intimately connected to its geological resources, starting over 7,000 years ago with the quarrying and trading of soapstone. Not only is this home for deer, beavers, and other animals but a place where everyday people can find peace and get away from the hustle and bustle of urban sprawl and enjoy a piece of America's true beauty. Arabia Mountain is home to plants that only can be found on the mountain. Arabia Mountain is truly a national heritage area. Arabia Mountain is also a place where families can come together to take a hike, be a part of a class, and even enjoy a cookout. We are in the midst of a season that causes us to remember the most important things in our lives--family. Family, Mr. Speaker, is what Arabia Mountain is about. It is a place where you can watch the sunset with someone you love, photograph unique flora, discover Georgia's lizards with your child, or blowout her candles at a birthday party. I invite my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote yes on H.R. 2099, the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area Act. Arabia Mountain is, indeed, a genuine American beauty. Finally, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Georgia Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson for their support; Georgia's Department of Natural Resources for its valuable input; my colleagues David Scott and Jim Marshall for cosponsoring this bill; and my staff for preparing this bill and helping it get to the Floor of the House today. I'd especially like to thank Congressman Pombo, Chairman of the House Resources Committee and his staff and Nick Rahall, its Ranking Member, and his staff, for their advice and counsel as this bill went through the legislative process in the House.

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I support the extension of the Defense Department's program ensuring that its Federal contracting process in no way supports or subsidizes the discrimination that has long been a problem in the contracting business. The extension of the program through September 2009 is needed to help achieve that goal. Congress has learned a great deal about the effects of discrimination in denying contracting opportunities for minority-owned businesses. The ugly reality is that contracting has long been dominated by ``old-boy'' networks that make it very difficult for African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans to participate fairly in these opportunities, or even obtain information about them. Years of Congressional hearings have shown that minorities historically have been excluded from both public and private construction contracts in general, and from Federal defense contracts in particular. Since its adoption, the Defense Department program, called the 1207 program, has helped level the playing field for minority contractors. But there is still more to do, as the additional information we have received since the program was last reauthorized makes clear. Ever since the program was first adopted in 1986, racial and ethnic discrimination--both overt and subtle--have continued to erect significant barriers to minority participation in federal contracting. In cases, overt discrimination has prevented minority-owned businesses from obtaining needed loans and bonds. Prime contractors, unions, and suppliers of goods and materials have preferred to do business with white contractors rather than with minority firms. These problems affect a wide variety of areas in which the Department offers contracts, and the problems are detailed in many recent disparity studies, including: City of Dallas Availability and Disparity Study, Mason Tillman Associates, Ltd. (2002); City of Cincinnati Disparity Study, Griffin & Strong, P.C. (2002); Ohio Multi-Jurisdictional Disparity Studies, Mason Tillman Associates, Ltd. (2003); Procurement Disparity Study of the Commonwealth of Virginia, MGT of America, Inc. (2004); Alameda County Availability Study, Mason Tillman Associates (2004); City of New York Disparity Study, Mason Tillman Associates, Ltd. (2005). The 1207 program helps to correct these problems of discrimination without imposing an undue burden on white-owned businesses. Small businesses owned by white contractors are eligible to receive the benefits of the program if they are socially or economically disadvantaged. All of us benefit when recipients of federal opportunities reflect America's diversity, and I'm proud to support the reauthorization of the 1207 program.

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, the Republicans in this House have done a heinous thing: they have insulted one of the deans of this House in an unthinkable and unconscionable way. They took his words and contorted them; they took his heartfelt sentiments and spun them. They took his resolution and deformed it: in a cheap effort to silence dissent in the House of Representatives. The Republicans should be roundly criticized for this reprehensible act. They have perpetrated a fraud on the House of Representatives just as they have defrauded the American people. By twisting the issue around, the Republicans are trying to set a trap for the Democrats. A ``no'' vote for this Resolution will obscure the fact that there is strong support for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. I am voting ``yes'' on this Resolution for an orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq despite the convoluted motives behind the Republican Resolution. I am voting to support our troops by bringing them home now in an orderly withdrawal. Sadly, If we call for an end to the occupation, some say that we have no love for the Iraqi people, that we would abandon them to tyrants and thugs. Let us consider some history. The Republicans make great hay about Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons against the Iranians and the Kurds. But when that attack was made in 1988, it was Democrats who moved a resolution to condemn those attacks, and the Reagan White House quashed the bill in the Senate, because at that time the Republicans considered Saddam one of our own. So in 1988, who abandoned the Iraqi people to tyrants and thugs? In voting for this bill, let me be perfectly clear that I am not saying the United States should exit Iraq without a plan. I agree with Mr. Murtha that security and stability in Iraq should be pursued through diplomacy. I simply want to vote yes to an orderly withdrawal from Iraq. And let me explain why. Prior to its invasion, Iraq had not one (not one!) instance of suicide attacks in its history. Research shows a 100 percent correlation between suicide attacks and the presence of foreign combat troops in a host country. And experience also shows that suicide attacks abate when foreign occupation troops are withdrawn. The U.S. invasion and occupation has destabilized Iraq and Iraq will only return to stability once this occupation ends. We must be willing to face the fact that the presence of U.S. combat troops is itself a major inspiration to the forces attacking our troops. Moreover, we must be willing to acknowledge that the forces attacking our troops are able to recruit suicide attackers because suicide attacks are largely motivated by revenge for the loss of loved ones. And Iraqis have lost so many loved ones as a result of America's two wars against Iraq. In 1996, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said on CBS that the lives of 500,000 children dead from sanctions were ``worth the price'' of containing Saddam Hussein. When pressed to defend this reprehensible position she went on to explain that she did not want U.S. Troops to have to fight the Gulf War again. Nor did I. But what happened? We fought a second Gulf War. And now over 2,000 American soldiers lie dead. And I expect the voices of concern for Iraqi civilian casualties, whose deaths the Pentagon likes to brush aside as ``collateral damage'' are too few, indeed. A report from Johns Hopkins suggests that over 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, most of them violent deaths and most as ``collateral damage'' from U.S. forces. The accuracy of the 100,000 can and should be debated. Yet our media, while quick to cover attacks on civilians by insurgent forces in Iraq, have given us a blackout on Iraqi civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. combat forces. Yet let us remember that the United States and its allies imposed a severe policy of sanctions on the people of Iraq from 1990 to 2003. UNICEF and World Health Organization studies based on infant mortality studies showed a 500,000 increase in mortality of Iraqi children under 5 over trends that existed before sanctions. From this, it was widely assumed that over 1 million Iraqi deaths for all age groups could be attributed to sanctions between 1990 and 1998. And not only were there 5 more years of sanctions before the invasion, but the war since the invasion caused most aid groups to leave Iraq. So for areas not touched by reconstruction efforts, the humanitarian situation has deteriorated further. How many more Iraqi lives have been lost through hunger and deprivation since the occupation? And what kind of an occupier have we been? We have all seen the photos of victims of U.S. torture in Abu Ghraib prison. That's where Saddam used to send his political enemies to be tortured, and now many Iraqis quietly, cautiously ask: ``So what has changed?'' A recent video documentary confirms that U.S. forces used white phosphorous against civilian neighborhoods in the U.S. attack on Fallujah. Civilians and insurgents were burned alive by these weapons. We also now know that U.S. forces have used MK77, a napalm-like incendiary weapon, even though napalm has been outlawed by the United Nations. With the images of tortured detainees, and the images of Iraqi civilians burned alive by U.S. incendiary weapons now circulating the globe, our reputation on the world stage has been severely damaged. If America wants to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, we as a people must be willing to face the pain and death and suffering we have brought to the Iraqi people with bombs, sanctions and occupation, even if we believe our actions were driven by the most altruistic of reasons. We must acknowledge our role in enforcing the policy of sanctions for 12 years after the extensive 1991 bombing in which we bombed infrastructure targets in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. We must also be ready to face the fact that the United States once provided support for the tyrant we deposed in the name of liberating the Iraqi people. These are events that our soldiers are too young to remember. I believe our young men and women in uniform are very sincere in their belief that their sacrifice is made in the name of helping the Iraqi people. But it is not they who set the policy. They take orders from the Commander-in-Chief and the Congress. It is we who bear the responsibility of weighing our decisions in a historical context, and it is we who must consider the gravest decision of whether or not to go to war based upon the history, the facts, and the truth. Sadly, however, our country is at war in Iraq based on a lie told to the American people. The entire war was based premised on a sales pitch--that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction menacing the United States--that turned out to be a lie. I have too many dead soldiers in my district; too many from my home state. Too many homeless veterans on our streets and in our neighborhoods. America has sacrificed too many young soldiers' lives, too many young soldiers' mangled bodies, to the Bush war machine. I will not vote to give one more soldier to the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney war machine. I will not give one more dollar for a war riddled with conspicuous profiteering. Tonight I speak as one who has at times been the only Member of this Body at antiwar demonstrations calling for withdrawal. And I won't stop calling for withdrawal. I was opposed to this war before there was a war; I was opposed to the war during the war; and I am opposed to this war now--even though it's supposed to be over. A vote on war is the single most important vote we can make in this House. I understand the feelings of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who might be severely conflicted by the decision we have to make here tonight. But the facts of U.S. occupation of Iraq are also very clear. The occupation is headed down a dead end because so long as U.S. combat forces patrol Iraq, there will be an Iraqi insurgency against it. I urge that we pursue an orderly withdrawal from Iraq and pursue, along with our allies, a diplomatic solution to the situation in Iraq, supporting the aspirations of the Iraqi people through support for democratic processes.

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I wish to enter the following into the Congressional Record: The 9/11 Commission Report One Year Later

Mrs. McKINNEY

Mrs. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I wish to enter the following into the Congressional Record: The 9/11 Commission Report One Year Later A CITIZENS' RESPONSE: DId THE COMMISSION GET IT RIGHT? A Congressional Briefing Convened on the First Anniversary of the Release of the 9/11 Commission Report, Friday, July 22, 2005

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. I will not take much time but I want to change the thrust just a little bit because I want to talk for a half minute about our education President. Now, it is my understanding, and I hope the gentleman will correct me where I am wrong and you will amplify what needs to be amplified where we are right, but our education President has underfunded No Child Left Behind by $39 billion. Now, he has also cut technical education, cut student loans, cut the grants available to students who want to go to college. And so basically they, the people who are making public policy in the Congress these days, are a bit out of touch with the way the rest of us live. We, our children, and those of us who are still students, rely on the funding that is available in the budget so that we can have the workforce for tomorrow being prepared today, and that is not the case. But the one thing I just want to say is, it is my understanding that all of these cuts in education can be likened to a student tax, and so I would like for the gentleman to amplify on that but I would just like to say that we had a minor, modest victory in the State of Georgia just yesterday because the courts in the State of Georgia turn back a legislative initiative put forward by the Republican controlled legislature and our Republican Governor. That was the much maligned the Voter ID bill. This Voter ID bill would have put a two-tiered structure in place for people being able to vote. That was a poll tax and the poll tax was turned back. Now we have got a student tax, a learning tax. Could the gentleman please talk to us about the impact of these cuts on the ability of us to prepare our young people for tomorrow's jobs but also how this becomes a learning tax on young people?

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Madam Speaker, it is amazing to me that American troops can get sick off Halliburton food, yet Halliburton continues to get contract after contract after contract after contract. But when tons of British food rations are provided to the Hurricane Katrina survivors, all they get is red tape from the FDA and the Bush administration. For crying out loud. If the report is to be believed, tons of British aid donated to help Hurricane Katrina survivors is to be burned by the Americans because U.S. red tape is stopping it from reaching the hungry evacuees. But these are the same food rations that are eaten by the British troops in Iraq, and the USDA has condemned them as unfit for human consumption while Halliburton continues to serve unfit rations to our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is a crying shame. When will the incompetence end?

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry. I do not want to take away the time of the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to know if indeed it is a fact that the Vice President of the United States receives a salary in the form of deferred compensation from Halliburton which, in turn, received a no-bid contract to do the cleanup work for Katrina, are we prevented from saying that on the floor of the House?

Ms. McKINNEY. I thank the Speaker. That means we can speak about these kinds of things.

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to commend my sister colleague, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), for introducing comprehensive poverty legislation of which I am a proud cosponsor. It is high time that we talk about poverty; and when we talk about poverty, I would like for everyone to see this beautiful black face, this beautiful black baby, who has a tear rolling down her cheek, which epitomizes in so many ways the conditions of Black America which now have been revealed for all of the world to see. But I came down here not to take very much time, but to say to my sister colleague that she said she was not going to play the race card. Well, you do not have to, because the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker) already has, if the reports from The Wall Street Journal are correct. And so I would just like to read into the Record what it is that The Wall Street Journal says that the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker) had to say. He said, according to The Wall Street Journal: ``We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We could not do it, but God did.'' Now, when the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker) made that comment, he was talking about that baby. And there are some of us, some of my colleagues outside of this body, who are very concerned about what the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker) had to say. But I also know that the mainstream media do not always get it right. So I would like to hear publicly from the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker) to see if this is exactly what he said and what he meant. Because, if it is, I can guarantee you there will be many people who will have something to say to him. The public policy we make here is all about attitudes, and when you have got this kind of an attitude making public policy, you cannot help but have tear drops rolling down the faces of America's children.

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, On September 2, 2005, I made the following statement at a press conference in Atlanta, GA and I submit it for the Record. I thank the Mayor and my colleagues for convening this press conference to express solidarity in our concern for the plight of Katrina's victims. The message today is that while we are watching this tragedy unfold, we are not sitting idly by. The Office of the Fourth Congressional District has adopted Baton Rouge Mosque #65 which is housing 100 New Orleans residents. They need dry goods, food, and hygiene kits. Anyone interested in helping us help these 100 people, please bring donations to our Congressional office as soon as possible. As we open our hearts, pocketbooks, and homes to Katrina's victims, it is now imperative that the Government do its part. To see it coming is not enough. The Administration appears flat-footed as its actions have not been fast enough and remain slower than most Americans can comprehend. A responsive government would: 1. Maximize the use of U.S. Customs air assets to drop badly needed food and supplies to the people. Sadly, I have been told by an investigative journalist that precious Customs air assets are available, but are not being used to ferry badly-needed food, radios, and supplies. We dropped food in Afghanistan, certainly we can drop food in the United States. 2. Tell the people what they can expect from their leadership in authority. Clear lines of authority should have been established and the people informed of what the government was going to do to alleviate their suffering. Much of the confusion and chaos we are witnessing is due to ineffective communication of the plan of action to the people in the affected areas. 3. Preposition necessities. It is clear that the Administration failed to preposition hospital ships, pumps, and supplies, in the face of a Category 5 hurricane barreling toward the Gulf States. The Administration is just now mobilizing to satisfy the massive and desperate need. And sadly, 40 percent of the Mississippi National Guard are in Iraq; 35 percent of the Louisiana National Guard are in Iraq; for Florida, the figure is 25 percent; Alabama has 23 percent of its Guard stationed in Iraq. 4. Be careful of the language used. What media bright light decided to term the New Orleans residents as ``refugees''? It is insulting and should be stopped immediately. And, how dare anyone talk down to a devastated population while Bunnatine Greenhouse sits busted from her job because she dared to pull the plug on Halliburton's looting of the U.S. Treasury of billions of dollars. The President asks for patience and lends Katrina's victims his thoughts and prayers. That is not enough given the magnitude of the problem. And FEMA should not now tell victims to take responsibility, but must instead deal with its own responsibility to care for a devastated population. And finally, talk from Speaker Hastert and others questioning the value of rebuilding the City of New Orleans should be arrested immediately. 5. Recalibrate its values and priorities. New Orleans is not just a home for hundreds of thousands; its ports form the heart of America's domestic and international commerce, and our oil and gas nerve center. Shame on this Administration for slashing money to protect New Orleans and shifting it to Halliburton and Iraq. Shame on this Administration for not curtailing our dependency on overconsumption of oil; and for not recognizing global warming. Shame on this Administration for failing to take care of the American people. 6. Offer maximum assistance to people in need. Houston's Astrodome has already reached its capacity. Atlanta has the capacity to give and a desire to share. Thank you.

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Madam Speaker, I have got a lot of papers and a lot of posters. One hour will in no way accommodate all that needs to be said tonight about the tremendous challenges that face our country today, including how we conduct ourselves in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. While my remarks tonight in no way should be construed as encompassing all of my thoughts on the very important issues that I discuss tonight, just mark this down as a start. First, let me say that I am especially proud of the way the people of my district and of this country have wrapped their arms around the victims of Hurricane Katrina. At this time, we have a healthy contingent of expert Georgians in the traumatized gulf States, and we have received thousands of Katrina's victims into our cities, churches, and homes. I have come to this floor on many occasions. People around the world have commented on how shocked they are to see such poverty in America. While cities and localities pass anti-panhandling measures that criminalize begging tourists and visitors in downtown areas asking for help, Hurricane Katrina washed away America's veneer of populist opportunity, a country that has overcome its racist, slave-holding past, a country ready for world dominion because it has learned how to uplift the human spirit at home. Katrina, in images as stark and undeniable as could be, has laid bare the Republican lie that its policies promote growth and prosperity for all Americans and leave no child behind, while Katrina put into our living rooms and the world's living rooms the cruel hoax that has been played on America and those who love America by the ruthless sybaritic power player elites who are as responsible for the conditions endured by too many Americans as they are for the embarrassing and breathtaking incompetencies we all witnessed just before Labor Day. Almost 30,000 New Orleans households live on less than $10,000 per year. More babies and young kids are going hungry in our country. Eleven percent of our families experienced hunger in 2003. One million more Americans are living in poverty today than there were 1 year ago. Income distribution has become obscenely skewed toward the rich during the Bush years. In Manhattan, the poor make two cents for each dollar that the rich make. This places Manhattan on par with Namibia for income disparity. Interestingly, in the financial capital of the world, New York City, the Bronx is the poorest urban county in the country, and New York State is being depleted of its middle class. America is being depleted of its middle class. Over 50 percent of America's income goes to the top 20 percent of households. With even more tax cuts for the wealthy on the horizon, coupled with real budget cuts for the programs that are forced to take care of more and more Americans, the situation can only be expected to get worse, sadly. Incomes for 95 percent of American households are flat or falling. Only the top 5 percent are experiencing the growth that we hear the Republicans talk about. Now, I have got tons of documentation to offer for all of the statistics that we cite, but let me take a moment and reiterate where we are for all the people who are listening tonight. Let me recall for just a moment the America they might not know but that more of us are coming all too well to know. I will start with this poster, which depicts a black man hanging from a tree. The caption says ``The body of Robert McNair is seen here as residents and schoolchildren in the Georgetown community saw it between about 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. last Thursday.'' This was on the front page of the Jackson, Mississippi, Advocate the week of October 23 to 29 when I was in Mississippi for a speaking engagement. This was what I saw. Sadly, it is what the children in the neighborhood saw, a black man hanging from a tree. A lynching. That is 2003. I am not talking about 1903. This is 2003. Sadly, in 2005, we have two lynchings being investigated in the State of Georgia, my home State, and both of them are supposed to have been suicides. In this story it was reported that this poor Mr. Robert McNair committed suicide, hanging from a tree. When I come to the floor and do these monthly talks, some way or other we get around to the state of black America because it is important for us to understand that there are many Americans, and some of those Americans we do not see and we do not know. But we need to know how all Americans live so that we can make sure that no American is left behind. On some indices, even today, it is true that the racial disparities are worse today than they were at the time of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. People would say it is not true, but, alas, it is true. And, of course, the statistics document that sad truth. United for a Fair Economy gives us these statistics in its State of the Dream report on imprisonment. To close the racial gap, it will take 190 years just so that black people are imprisoned for the same crime at the same rate as white people are imprisoned. What about poverty? We saw a lot of that. Overall poverty, the racial disparity, 150 years to close the gap. Why does that have to be? At the slow rate that the black-white poverty gap has been narrowing since 1968, it would take 150 years to close the gap. What about child poverty? Two hundred ten years to close the gap. Almost one-third of black children live in poverty. The child poverty gap would take 210 years to disappear, not reaching parity until 2212. I would like to thank the National Council for La Raza that provided us with these statistics, the proportion of children without health insurance in the United States, home ownership rates. Look and you can see the proportion of children without health insurance in the United States. Look at the Hispanic figures. Look at that. Twenty-five percent of young Latino children do not have health insurance in this country. What about home ownership rates, because we hear a lot of talk about the growth economy, and the Republicans and the President talk about promoting home ownership, home ownership, the first tier toward building wealth, okay? Well, if you are lucky enough to be able to own a home, sadly black and Hispanic home ownership rates are low. How low? To close the home ownership gap, the disparity between white home ownership and black home ownership, the first tier toward wealth building, it will take 1,664 years to close the home ownership gap. This is something that so many Americans take for granted. Yet so many Americans still have a dream for home ownership. Now, what about income? It will take 581 years for us to close the per capita income gap. Since 1968, we have only been able to close the gap 2 cents. Black people make 55 cents for every dollar. That was in 1968. In 2001, it was 57 cents. Two cents, so 581 years to close the gap. When some people start talking about how we want to build, rebuild, and provide for folks, that is what this Congress is supposed to do. We should build lives, we should build communities, build neighborhoods, and protect our people. When it comes to the economic conditions that are prevailing for so many Americans, it is almost a joke. Here is a cartoon from the Washington Post. This is the sybaritic power player who is pulling the strings behind the scene, calling the shots, dictating politics and policy; and he is saying, ``It is not trickle down economics. We got the plumbing fixed.'' Here is the poor little fella down here, little panhandler trying to wait to get some of the stuff that is trickling down, and it is not trickling down any more. Poverty is up. Median income down. That is the result of the policies of the Bush administration since 2001. What about all these tax cuts? New Orleans has got a lot of attention now because of what has happened, and we hear and we will hear some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle suggesting that we need to do more tax cuts. Well, the faces of the people that came into our living rooms from Hurricane Katrina got this much from George Bush's tax cuts. But if you happened to make over $200,000 a year, you got this much from George Bush's tax cuts. It is so clear that the administration wants to serve some of the people all of the time and fool the rest of us all of the time. The tax cuts, we should not hear another word uttered about the need for more of the kind of tax cuts that the Bush administration has given us thus far. This insensitive policymaking that ends up hurting real people leads to a kind of callousness within our society that we do not recognize sometimes, that we do not notice sometimes. It is easy to pass an anti-panhandling ordinance in the city of Atlanta because we do not feel the pain of the people who do not eat at night. So it is also easy to demonize people. It is easy to demonize people that you do not know. This made it around the Internet until Agence France-Presse pulled their photo off. But how is it that we can have a media in this country displaying one young man wading through that putrid water and the American press, the Associated Press, says that he is ``looting.'' Then you have two people who are obviously not black and they are ``finding.'' This young man, according to the Associated Press, walks through chest-deep floodwater after ``looting'' a grocery store. Two residents wade through chest-deep water after ``finding'' bread and soda. This is the America of those statistics. This is the America that all Americans need to know and see. This is the America that too many of us have borne the brunt of generation after generation after generation after generation. And then, they called them ``refugees.'' Some bright light in the media came up with that one to further dehumanize poor black people in New Orleans. I had some New Orleans residents in my congressional office in Georgia who said that they had never, ever thought that they would be called refugees in their own country. Other insensitive language just shows how totally out of touch the leadership of this country is with the American people. While the city was still flooding, Speaker Hastert suggested that New Orleans should not be rebuilt. As the mostly black people were herded into what looked like concentration camps, Barbara Bush suggested that they were really better off now than they were before. Well, maybe she has got something there, because it took losing an entire city for the ``compassionate conservatives'' in Washington, D.C., to finally get some compassion in the laws they pass, in the policies they enact, in what they do around here. And you can imagine my surprise to hear the very people who chose not to adequately fund education, health care, affordable housing, now saying we have got to have Pell grants, Section 8 vouchers, schooling for children. It is what some of us have been saying all along. Now, you can just about bet your bottom dollar that the Karl Rove spin machine is working overtime to whitewash the Bush administration preparations for the response to Katrina. Let us remember as we go through this that the State and local responders were victims too. That is why it is critical that the feds act. But they did not act, notwithstanding anything that comes out of the spin machine. Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana said, ``We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water. They wanted to negotiate an organizational chart.'' This is from the New York Times. ``Far from deferring to State or local officials, FEMA asserted its authority and made things worse,'' according to Mr. Broussard, and I will talk about him a little bit later, who complained on Meet the Press. Mayor Nagin said, ``The root of the breakdown was the failure of the Federal Government to deliver relief supplies and personnel quickly. They kept promising and saying things would happen. I was getting excited and telling people that. They kept making promises and promises.'' MSNBC informs us that FEMA Director Michael Brown waited 5 hours after the storm's landfall to get agency assistance, to get agency aid from the Department of Homeland Security. Now, another thing that we need to know about, there are so many things that our government does in our name with our tax dollars, on our behalf supposedly, that we do not know about. The Bush administration has opened up these biodefense labs all over the country. In about 20, 25 universities around the country we have got biodefense labs studying I do not know what. I can remember the Tuskegee Study. I remember MK-Ultra as an African American. I remember Paul Robeson. But Tulane University is under water, and Tulane University houses one of these biodefense labs. We need to know what the heck was in that lab, what was going on in that biodefense lab. Some of the headlines. Notwithstanding what you may hear from the other side of the aisle or coming out of the White House about how everyone has to share the blame, these are some of the headlines. ``FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations.'' ``FEMA turns away experienced firefighters.'' ``FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks.'' ``FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel.'' ``Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food.'' ``FEMA bars morticians from entering New Orleans.'' ``FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid.'' ``FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board.'' ``FEMA to Chicago: Send just one truck.'' ``FEMA turns away generators.'' ``FEMA first responders urged not to respond.'' Those are just a few of the headlines. I have got all of the documentation, of course. There is also a story about three U.S. Customs Blackhawk helicopter crews that are absolutely livid because they had been directed not to provide full-time support for the hurricane relief effort in the Gulf. ``Navy ship nearby underused.'' This is from the Chicago Tribune. A craft with food, water, doctors. All it needed was the orders. It never got the orders. ``Federal agency slow to accept business help.'' This is from the Financial Times, ``Federal agency slow to accept business help. From Wal-Mart's satellite-based communications system to FedEx's aircraft, U.S. business has in some cases managed to provide a swifter response to the initial impacts of Hurricane Katrina than the Federal and State authorities.'' This is from the Salt Lake City Tribune: ``Frustrated fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA. Many of the firefighters assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by FEMA thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers. Instead, they have learned they are going to be community relations officers for FEMA, shuffling throughout the gulf coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number, 1-800- 621-FEMA,'' which does not work most of the time. Now, I know that American children can do better in geography, but you would think that at least our emergency management people would get their geography right. CNN.com says, Well, they were supposed to go to Charleston. My colleague from Charleston, we were in a meeting on Tuesday night, and he said they had the shelter all set up with supplies, cots, blankets and everything, and nobody came. Now we find out that this is why they did not come. They were supposed to be in Charleston, South Carolina. Guess where FEMA took them? Charleston, West Virginia. What incompetence. Right city, wrong State. CNN.com. I cannot even imagine. No one should imagine. It is ridiculous. But they are going to tell you everything is all right. The New York Times tells us, ``Navy pilots who rescued victims are reprimanded.'' What? ``Two Navy helicopter pilots and their crews returned from New Orleans on August 30 expecting to be greeted as lifesavers after ferrying more than 100 victims to safety. Instead, they were reprimanded.'' Well, we are working on this, since I serve on the Committee on Armed Services. But the sad thing about it is, when we had our briefing on Tuesday evening, the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of HUD were all there at the briefing, except that Defense kept going in and out, Homeland Security kept going in and out, could not stay long enough to brief the Members of Congress or to hear from the Members of Congress who are directly impacted by their failure, their incompetence. Malik Rahin is a former Black Panther Party member. In a very compelling radio interview he said, ``You want more morality from the poor than from the rich.'' But he rejected the idea that New Orleans was a city divided by race. He said, ``Whites took their boats and went into black neighborhoods. But it was the feds who forced people to leave their possessions. Once they got rescued, they had to leave their possessions. They could only take one bag.'' He says, ``Over 70 percent of the people who were rescued were rescued by individuals.'' Then he went on to say something very interesting. He said, ``$90 million of HOPE VI construction, but the people who needed it the most in New Orleans got no training, no community service.'' Louisiana has the highest dropout rate in the country. He said, ``Juvenile justice is a disgrace.'' He said, ``The only equal opportunity employer here is drugs.'' We heard a lot about shooting. He says, ``White vigilante groups with shotguns and rifles rode around saying they were going to shoot the looters.'' They were unchecked. There could have been a riot. He says, ``There was about to be a race riot.'' He said, ``Many whites took their own personal boats into the black community. Too many acts of heroism, sharing ice, sharing water.'' Then he mentions Jefferson Parish had to secede from the United States of America. So I want to mention the Jefferson Parish president. But before that I am going to mention what Mayor Nagin in a wonderfully compelling interview with WWL said when he had the opportunity to speak directly with President Bush. He said, ``I told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice, and that I have been all around this city, and I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshal resources and we are outmanned in just about every respect.'' But in perhaps the most compelling of all of the interviews that we have seen, and these are all available on the Internet, is Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, on Meet the Press. He said, ``Sir, they were told, like me, every single day the cavalry is coming on the Federal level, the cavalry is coming, the cavalry is coming, the cavalry is coming. I have just begun to hear the hooves of the cavalry. The cavalry is still not out here yet, but I have begun to hear the hooves, and we are almost a week out.'' Then he gives three quick examples, one of the Wal-Mart delivery trucks, three trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel. It was docked in Jefferson Parish. The Coast Guard said, ``Come and get the fuel right away. When we got there with our trucks, they got the word. FEMA says, `Don't give the fuel.' Yesterday, yesterday FEMA comes in and cuts all our communication lines.'' Why is FEMA cutting communications? ``The guy who runs the building I am in, Emergency Management,'' this is Aaron Broussard on Meet the Press, ``he is responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard Nursing Home, and every day she called him and said, `Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' He said, `Yeah, mama, somebody is coming to get you.' `Somebody is coming to get you on Tuesday.' `Somebody is coming to get you on Wednesday.' `Somebody is coming to get you on Thursday.' `Somebody is coming to get you on Friday.' And she drowned Friday night.'' And she drowned Friday night. ``Nobody is coming to get us. Nobody is coming to get us. The Secretary has promised. Everybody has promised. They have had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God's sake, just shut up and send us somebody.'' Aaron Broussard. Want the facts? The FEMA chief waited 5 hours after Katrina made landfall on August 29. Five hours. It is clear also that the administration would like to avoid a blame game. They want to do everything to not discuss the failures. What is Michael Brown's reaction to all of this? Michael Brown, FEMA director, says in a CNN interview: ``Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.'' That is our FEMA director, Michael Brown. How out of touch could this man have been? Those 9/11 activists know how critical it is to construct a timeline, because the timeline tells us who did what and when they did it. The timeline will tell us the truth. The timeline cuts through the spin. So, of course, I made a point to get in touch with the folks who were collecting the timelines, and there are a lot of timelines available on the Internet. Think Progress has a timeline, and WWL also has a timeline. All the while this was going on, the news media reported that the Iraq war costs now exceed Vietnam's. But I think it is pretty clear that the Iraq war is costing us more than money. Let us just look at where some of those assets were. Mississippi has 40 percent of its National Guard forces in Iraq. Louisiana has 35 percent of its National Guard forces in Iraq. Florida has 26 percent. Alabama has 23 percent of its National Guard forces in Iraq. On June 8, 2004, in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Walter Maestri, who is emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, said, ``It appears that the money has been moved in the President's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq. And I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we're doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.'' Security, we are going to discuss that in a minute. On April 24, 2004, the Times-Picayune said: ``Less money is available to the Army Corps of Engineers to build levees and water projects in the Mississippi River Valley this year and next year.'' Nobody can say they did not know, were not warned, whatever it is that the spin machine might come up with. National Geographic Magazine, October 2004, came up with an article that reported on a simulation, I will not call it a game, but a simulation of what would happen should a hurricane hit New Orleans: ``As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however. The carless, the homeless, the aged, the infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.'' It goes on to describe just exactly what happened during Hurricane Katrina, but that was in October 2004. The Louisiana National Guard also knew that they were paying a price that was perhaps too high. On August 1 the Louisiana National Guard complained that they were taking critical equipment to Iraq that should have remained in Louisiana. But when the Bush administration does not like what one says, they just fire them. So there was a former Member of Congress that I had the pleasure to serve with, Mike Parker from Mississippi, who was with the Army Corps of Engineers. He complained that they were cutting the Army Corps of Engineers budget too much, and so he was forced out. Now it turns out that Michael Brown was forced out too. He was forced out from the job he had before he became the FEMA assistant director and then director. Let me see if I can read this correctly. Michael Brown's previous employment was with the International Arabian Horse Association, and he was fired from that job too. They said that he was asked to resign. And so, of course, eminently qualified to serve in the Bush administration; he gets one of the most important jobs in the country with the lives of the American people in his hands. We know that this is what they do, hurting people whom they disagree with, because there is the case of another Army Corps of Engineers employee by the name of Bunnatine Greenhouse, who complained about the no-bid sweetheart deal private contracts going to Halliburton. Well, she was forced out of her job too because, even though Vice President Dick Cheney still gets his deferred compensation checks from Halliburton Corporation, I guess the Bush administration is not finished with Halliburton, because they have been hired to do the storm cleanup. Is there no other corporation in America? Why is it that it always has to be Halliburton? Well, the Times-Picayune calls for the firing of Michael Brown; and I have signed my name to many letters that are floating around here calling for his firing, his resignation, Chertoff's as well; and in a minute somebody on this House floor is going to mention impeachment. But as if making sure that Halliburton got what they needed to get, I checked the FEMA Web site, and on the FEMA Web site it says: ``Help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.'' First on the list is American Red Cross. We remember that during 9/11, there were many complaints from the victims of 9/11, and I remember seeing one report of the symphony orchestra getting some of the 9/11 contributions. But there is Operation Blessing. Operation Blessing was founded by Pat Robertson. That is the same Pat Robertson who called for the assassination of a duly elected president, Hugo Chavez, of Venezuela. How can FEMA recommend that someone who calls for the murder of somebody else get hard-earned money from the American people? It is on the FEMA Web site, and it is outrageous. But there is more. Sadly, there is more. I agree with the Tom Hartman article: ``You Can't Govern if You Don't Believe in Government.'' What we have witnessed here in utter stark relief is the culmination of all of that Republican ideology against government, against the people, against helping people who are in need. Ronald Reagan was elected President by saying: ``The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, `I'm from the government and I'm here to help.''' Newt Gingrich in 1995 told us what he thought about government. He was speaking about Medicare. He said: ``Now, we don't want to get rid of it in round one because we don't think that's politically smart and we do not think that's the right way to go through a transition. But we believe it is going to wither on the vine because we think people are going to voluntarily leave it.'' Wither on the vine. Grover Norquist in 2001 said this, and I think this encapsulates it all: ``I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.'' That is how these people feel about government. So I am not surprised that the Army Corps of Engineers budget is cut to the extent it is cut. I am not surprised. Here, Bush's agenda is to cut government services to the bone and make people rely on the private sector for the things they need. So he sliced $71 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. In addition, the President cut $30 million in flood control. And then Bush took to the airwaves on ``Good Morning America'' on September 1 and said, ``I don't think anyone anticipated that breach of the levees.'' ``I don't think anyone anticipated that breach of the levees.'' Now, in stark contrast to the way the Department of Homeland Security mobilized to secure the people of the gulf States, within 48 hours of the notification of the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist, Bush nominated Roberts to serve as Chief Justice. They are real fast at doing some things. Now, at some point, we have to talk about values and priorities and how it has become that our values and our priorities are so twisted and mangled now. We are focusing on other things, and some of those things are important. I am not going to say that everything is not so important that has become a priority. We had a resolution today that six people voted against to give Bush another blank check in the war on terrorism. I was one of the six. No more blank checks, Mr. President, not for war, not for war. I went to the Committee on Homeland Security's Web site, and I just thought I would look and see which subcommittee has jurisdiction for natural disasters. Well, I could not believe it. I did not see any mention at all of natural disasters. So I went to one of our interns, whose eyes are a whole lot younger than mine, and I said, Would you please scour the entire website, because I have put in a search and it did not come up in a search; scour the entire website, and I want you to highlight the number of times you see the mention of the two words, ``natural disaster.'' It is not mentioned. It is not mentioned. On the entire Committee on Homeland Security Web site ``natural disaster'' is not mentioned. Now, a young man had a script before him, and he was supposed to read the script, but he took the opportunity to deviate from the script and speak his mind. His name is Kanye West. He has been on the cover of all these national magazines talking about how he is the most brilliant new hip-hop, rap artist, Kanye West. And now, he is being vilified because he dared to take a detour from what some people wanted him to say and say what he wanted to say, which is, quite frankly, the origins of hip- hop anyway, young people who have something to say and have found the means to say it. Kanye West said, ``I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family; it says they are `looting.' You see a white family; it says they are `looking for food.' And, you know, it has been 5 days, because most of the people are black, and even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite, because I have tried to turn away from the TV because it is too hard to watch. I have even been shopping before even giving a donation. ``So now I am calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give,'' notice he said he is calling his business manager; I want you to pay attention to that. ``And, just imagine if I was down there and those are my people down there. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well off, as slow as possible.'' Now, NBC censored that. NBC has decided that they can determine what we hear from the smartest young man in hip-hop. He also said, ``George Bush doesn't care about black people.'' NBC censored it. They deleted his remarks. And MSNBC President Rick Kaplan, who produced the telethon at Rockefeller Plaza in New York, had the cameras cut to actor Chris Tucker who was on a different part of the stage and who appeared to be looking off at something else in the camera. So it was the MSNBC president, who was also the producer, who said, Well, you know, maybe the American people do not need to hear the smartest young man in hip-hop's ideas about George Bush. Thank goodness, I can come to the floor of the House and speak my piece. And as long as C-SPAN cameras are running, well, it will not be cut off, but I understand there is even an effort to try and limit C- SPAN's access to American households. But I have to tell my colleagues something. As I saw the African Americans, mostly African American families ripped apart, I could only think about slavery, families ripped apart, herded into what looked like concentration camps. So I was reminded of a Miami Herald article written on July 5, the day after Freedom Day, 1987. The title of the article was ``Reagan Aides and the Secret Government,'' and here is a quote from that article: ``A copy of the memo was obtained by the Herald. The scenario outlined in the Brinkerhoff memo resembles somewhat a paper Giufreda had written in 1970 at the Army War College in Carlyle, Pennsylvania, in which he advocated martial law in case of a national uprising by black militants.'' In which he advocated martial law in case of a national uprising by black militants. The paper also advocated the roundup and transfer of two ``assembly centers or relocation camps of at least 21 million American Negroes.'' Now, I did not write that; the U.S. Government wrote that. They were going to round up 21 million Negroes because they were afraid of freeing black people. A story of neglect? I am not surprised about any story of neglect of the people that comes from this body with this set of priorities, that passes these kinds of budgets on the backs of the American people, these kinds of tax cuts on the backs of the American people. I want to commend my sister Congresswoman, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), who has said that it is time for us to get serious about poverty in this country. It is time for us to get serious. I am a proud cosponsor of legislation with the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee). I will just conclude by saying that on the United States State Department Web site is ``How to identify misinformation.'' Does the story fit the pattern of a conspiracy theory?