John Warner

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Yes.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I very much appreciate the contribution of our distinguished colleague. We have two speakers on our side ready to go forward, and we will rotate, as the case may be. But we now have the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, who is also the chairman of the Subcommittee on Defense within the larger committee, a man who has dedicated much of his lifetime to defense issues, beginning in World War II with his distinguished service in the Army Air Corps. I would hope the chairman might make reference to the work that has been done in his committee with reference to the issues relating to international terrorism, Iraq, and North Korea, because there is some challenge to the Senate as an institution as to whether or not we are giving attention to these issues. Within the last day or so, I put into the Record a very long recitation of what the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate has been doing. I know the Committee on Appropriations, particularly the subcommittee, has been very active. We also are likely to hear from the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. His committee has also been doing a great deal of work. We all recognize the value of debates in this historic Chamber, but there is much work going on within the committee structure by individual Senators in their town meetings. So, collectively, this institution has a good record of addressing the serious issues of our time. I yield the floor.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, it is always a great pleasure to listen to my distinguished colleague. I wonder if I might just make reference to a point of history. Give or take a year or so, both of us lived through the World War II period. You were a distinguished aviator with the Air Corps. I was a mere sailor in the closing months. You got overseas and, fortunately, my generation didn't have to go because of the courage of Harry Truman.

Mr. WARNER. I thank the Senator very much. We have to use history as a rearview mirror to explain the complexity of the times. You will recall that period in 1937 when the war clouds were gathering in Europe, and Neville Chamberlain went over to see whether or not he could reconcile the situation involving Hitler and the extraordinary buildup of his forces. The world was apprehensive. Chamberlain emerged from the meeting and flew back to London with a piece of paper that said ``peace in our times.'' And then we know the tragic events that unfolded after that, with the invasion of Poland in 1939, and then down through and into France in 1940, and the entrapment of the British forces at Dunkerque. The whole world came in on top of us because we failed to heed what was absolutely manifest--that Hitler was a despotic dictator, with the then-current generation of weapons of destruction, and he unleashed them on the whole world as we stood by. Mr. President, I fear the same consequences now. That is why I commend our President for his steadfastness, tenaciousness, courage, and wisdom in addressing these issues and not flinching or blinking, but staying the course and trying, as he said last night, to make diplomacy work, but recognizing that if diplomacy fails, we have to step into the breach and lead. The Senator mentioned the only nation is the United States, but I know he wishes to include Great Britain.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, on behalf of the majority leader, I advise Members that the Senate will be in a period of morning business until the hour of 12:30 p.m. today, with time equally divided between the chairman of the Armed Services Committee and the Democratic leader or their designees. The Senate leadership--the majority and minority-- recognizing that a number of Senators have desired to speak on the international situation, is making this period available for Senators to address the world scene relating to the war on terrorism, with emphasis on Iraq and North Korea. As announced last night, there will be no rollcall votes during today's session. The next vote will occur at 6 p.m. on Monday. It will be on the nomination of Gregory Frost of Ohio to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Ohio. Also, a reminder: Under the consent agreement reached last night, the Senate will begin consideration of Calendar No. 19, S. 3, the partial- birth abortion bill, at 5 p.m. on Monday.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I yield such time as may be required to our distinguished colleague from New Hampshire.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, in fairness, this letter is part of a very complex and long dialog between Senator Levin and various members of the administration. Were he here today, he would say he is still not satisfied with regard to this issue. At one point I recognized that one member of the administration said to him, Senator, I gave you incorrect numbers at one time and I am now correcting them. I think a good-faith effort has been made by the administration to resolve such differences as Senator Levin has had. Having been in most, if not all, of the discussions with Senator Levin at the time he raised these important questions, the preponderance of the facts shows unequivocally our Nation has cooperated fully on the matters of intelligence. I stand by that. I heard the National Security Adviser state that, the Director of Central Intelligence state that, and others. We have cooperated. Have there been some disjoints of timing and perhaps numbers? I cannot say it is perfect, but there has been overall sincere cooperation. We have had an excellent debate today. I thank my colleagues for joining me on the floor, both on my side of the aisle and the other side of the aisle. We have met the test of the Senate addressing this question. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I think this letter answers Senator Kennedy's first statement: We have just begun to provide information.

Mr. WARNER. Go on to the second paragraph.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I say to my good friend, a couple of letters are about to be handed to him. They are in the Record. He is mistaken in the facts. The letters cite what we have done over an extensive period of time--over the last 3 or 4 months. I personally, together with the former chairman, Senator Levin, now ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, have consulted with Director Tenet on this matter. We have been in a room with the actual person entrusted to convey on a daily basis to Hans Blix this information. It has been going on for months. It did not just start. Let me read one paragraph, and then I will yield. Statement for the record: The American intelligence community has-- That is past tense-- has provided extensive intelligence and other support to the United Nations on Iraq and WMD, and potential inspection sites for over 10 years. There is, therefore, a very strong common understanding of sites of potential interest to the inspectors, whether UNSCOM inspectors or UNMOVIC inspectors or IAEA inspectors. When the current round of inspections began, the Intelligence Community assembled several lists of suspect sites, which we combined into a common list in early January. This list consisted of high, moderate, and low value sites, depending on our assessment of recent activities suggesting ongoing WMD association or other intelligence information that the sites were worth inspecting. We have now provided detailed information on all of the high value and moderate value sites to UNMOVIC and IAEA. The letter continues to detail what has been done over a period of months, I say to the Senator. It just did not start yesterday.

Mr. WARNER. These are in strong rebuttal of my colleague's comments. I will read what the President said with reference to North Korea: Well, I think it is an issue. Obviously, I am concerned about North Korea developing nuclear weapons, not only for their own use, but perhaps choose to proliferate them, sell them. The President is working in a national multilateral forum to try to address this problem because it is regional in that Russia, Japan, South Korea and, indeed, China have a heavy stake in seeing that the Korean peninsula does not become nuclearized. It is clear as that, I say to my friend, and I think the President, in a very responsible way, the initial approach to this, a multilateral approach, the approach my colleague is urging on the President with regard to Iraq, is applying in the Korean peninsula situation. It does not preclude possibly bilateral discussions at some later date and time. Second, on the issue of Iraq, the question is time, months. Time is not on our side. The President addressed this very explicitly last night in his remarks. He simply said that his concern--and I will put the text in the Record--his concern is, again, the question of proliferation. No one in this Chamber thus far, in the weeks and the months we have debated this issue, has denied Saddam Hussein has enormous caches of weapons of mass destruction which he has failed to declare and which the inspectors have failed to destroy because of the inability to locate them through lack of cooperation from Iraq. What is to prevent Saddam Hussein, if he has not already done it, from taking small amounts of these weapons and allowing an international terrorist organization, be it al-Qaida or others, to take this material and begin to carry it to places throughout the world, whether it be Europe or the United States, and dissemble it? I bring back the tragic aftermath of the discovery of anthrax sent to Members of this body. Postal employees lost their lives. One of our Senate office buildings was shut down. We suffered a severe blow as a consequence of an unopened envelope which contained but a few ounces, if that, of this material. And Saddam Hussein, it is documented, has tons of it, undeclared, not found, and all of this could have been achieved if he had cooperated with the inspection regime which was initiated in November of last year. Time is not on our side. The failure of the United States and the coalition of willing nations, principally Great Britain, not to act is not in our interest. The price of inaction is far greater than the price of action. As I listened to my colleague from Massachusetts--and he has spoken very eloquently on these subjects over the past several days. I admire his courage to get out and lead in this debate. It is an important debate. It is taking place across the Nation. But I cannot find in my colleague's comments where he specifically has a program whereby to force Iraq to cooperate. Why is it that he has not emphasized the need for Iraq to cooperate and what steps should our country, Great Britain, or others do to force that cooperation, other than the steps we have taken thus far, which have not proved fruitful? Yes, here and there Saddam Hussein steps up and does some little thing to buy time, but he would not have needed that time if he had cooperated and began that cooperation when the inspection regime began last November. Mr. President, wherein does the Senator lay out a program to compel Iraq to cooperate?

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I would like to also--if I may, on my time--address points raised by my colleague from Massachusetts. Quite properly, the Senator raises the issue of North Korea. The President addressed that last night. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record his comments.

Mr. WARNER. Yes. We met with President Karzai. I assume you saw him when he visited here. Incidentally, the French are very active in the training of those forces, and the Germans are taking an active role in the training of those forces. It is coming together, I say to the Senator.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I assure my colleague that we are greatly concerned about the safety of our service personnel as they undertake this mission, if it has to be done. I visited with them, together with Senators Levin, Rockefeller, and Roberts. They are ready. The Senator raises, quit properly, the record we had first in Kosovo. I happen to have visited there during the early part of that securing of it by the United States and other forces. I assure the Senator that the rules of engagement were spelled out. I remember American servicemen guarding the Serbian churches from destruction. I remember instances where they would carefully respond to protect the Serbs, who were at that point in time in minority status, so to speak. So we performed that mission, and we did it admirably, together with a coalition of nations. We will have other nations assisting us in this engagement. Then you bring about Afghanistan. That is a country, historically, that has been fought over by factions. We visited there a week or 10 days ago. There is relative quietude there. There is no severe amount of factional strife today; that is, outbursts of actual casualties and the like. Tensions are present. We are trying to reconstitute an armed forces under the Government of Afghanistan now. So we have a good track record on that.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I welcome the question from my colleague. He is a very valued member of the Armed Services Committee. We had briefings this week by the Department of Defense, and indeed a representative from the Department of State, on the plans now being formulated by the Bush administration, should force be necessary, as to exactly what we would do with respect to the questions raised by my colleague. First and foremost, our forces, as they would move in, are responsible for the objective of trying to keep Iraq together and constituted as a nation, as it is today. It is the elimination of weapons of mass destruction and the consequent regime change that are the goals. Now, they are to provide first protection for the nongovernmental organizations which stand ready to assist our country. In other words, we will be making an effort to feed and care for the people of Iraq, as well as outsiders. That is the highest priority. So we are to provide a secure framework in which the people of Iraq can be cared for as best they can under wartime conditions. With respect to factions in Iraq and their desire to fight among each other, we are going to do our best to contain that. Our goal is to have Iraq as a nation, with its present boundaries, remaining intact. We are bringing in experts to put out any fires Saddam Hussein may set at the oil wells. We are bringing in people to establish, as quickly as possible, a secure framework in which the people of Iraq can begin to select their own leadership and government in due course. So there has been a lot of planning. As to the exact rules of engagement that commanders, as the Senator and I understand, will issue to their troops, at the moment I do not have those orders. But I assure the Senator that we are contemplating the challenge to maintain the integrity of Iraq as a nation. That could well involve stopping the civil strife between factions. But a lot of planning has been done. I think the administration has been subjected to undue criticism because the planning as yet has not been fully made public. But it is there, I say to the Senator.

Mr. WARNER. Of course.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I see the Senator from Massachusetts. I ask unanimous consent that the time the Senator from Virginia consumed in this colloquy be charged to his allocation and the time consumed by the Senator from Connecticut be charged to the other side. I thank my colleague. I hope to have more to say on this.

Mr. WARNER. Yes.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, we are entitled to an honest difference of opinion. My colleague and I debated last night in a public forum on this very issue. But I believe our Government has been very thoroughly engaged in the inspection process, trying to support it. I provide today some tangible evidence in the sense that I have a letter from the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, addressed to me with a copy to my distinguished colleagues, Senator Levin and Senator Roberts, in which they set out for the record exactly what we have done by way of giving the U.S. intelligence regarding likely sites where weapons of mass destruction could be in the process of being manufactured, stored, or otherwise. We have cooperated mightily in this effort. I think that corroborates the assertion of the Senator from Virginia that our Government is engaged. I just read one paragraph here, Tenet stating we, the United States: . . . have now provided detailed information on all of the high value and moderate value sites to UNMOVIC and the IAEA. That is in rebuttal to your comment about genuine engagement. I think that shows good faith. Second, this rush headlong? As the Senator well knows, 1441 was adopted on November 8. Immediately thereafter the United Nations began to put in place and formalize work that Blix had been doing for some period of time. As you well know, the United Nations contemplated that there could be a second inspection regime, and Blix was put in office and began his work some months before. Had he undertaken to go into Iraq as quickly as I think feasible from a logistics standpoint, and having with him trained individuals, and he has been there basically since the latter part of November, early December--am I not correct in that? The reason there has not been greater productivity by Blix--I think he has tried diligently--is the absolute lack of cooperation of Iraq, to which my colleague from Connecticut has agreed. Here we are now. Our President and the Prime Minister and other nations of the coalition of the willing, having called up their reserves, called up their guard, transported the forces and put them in place. I was visiting there with Senator Levin, Senator Roberts, and Senator Rockefeller 10 days ago. We have placed them there. As the Senator from Connecticut I think quite properly said, in fairness, their presence has, indeed, supported the diplomatic efforts undertaken by the President and others in the United Nations, which is still going on. Our President said last night that we will wait and see what the Blix report comes forth with. He has come forth again today. With due respect to Blix, he tends to be somewhat contradictory. In previous reports he quite actively deplored the fact that Iraq has not been more cooperative and that lack of cooperation has hindered his efforts. As the Senator well knows, the concept of this inspection was not that Blix and his team had to find the weapons; it was that Iraq was to cooperate and show where the weapons are so Blix could supervise their destruction. This thing got totally, as we say as sailors, off course because of the need for Blix to do both the destruction, which he is now supervising, of a modest cache of missiles, and at the same time trying to search, using U.S. intelligence and intelligence from other nations, for the sites. I say to the Senator, I see no basis for saying that this President, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, or others are rushing, as you said, headlong to try to utilize force as the final solution. We have been at this thing 12 years. Blix has been in business since November.

Mr. WARNER. Yes.

Mr. WARNER. With reference to two points that you make, Senator, first--I copied in my notes--you questioned was the United States ever genuinely engaged in the inspection process, some words to that effect.

Mr. WARNER. Certainly. The Senator from Massachusetts has been most patient. I ask unanimous consent that morning business be extended to the hour of 1 o'clock, the time equally divided between myself and my colleagues on the other side.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Why do we not just agree now to extend the time by 30 minutes, equally divided between the two of us? That will take us to the hour of 1 o'clock.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, will the Senator allow me to have one or two questions, by way of a colloquy?

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Alabama. I welcome the opportunity now to listen, and perhaps engage in colloquy with my two good friends, the Senator from Connecticut and the Senator from Massachusetts. We have been at this debate 2 hours 10 minutes. We are delighted to have them join us.