9/11 Commission Report

9/11 COMMISSION REPORT -- (House of Representatives - July 22, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) is recognized for half the time remaining until midnight as the designee of the majority leader.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to kind of catch up on some of the comments that were made earlier this evening by my friends on the other side of the aisle.

One of our friends suggested that we should involve the international community here in the Iraq situation. I would remind her that the international community, the U.N., the United Nations is involved in the largest scandal, the oil-for-food scandal that this world has seen, almost $10 billion, and it looks like our friends in France and Russia were involved in taking payoffs and taking oil vouchers at the very time they were taking U.N. Security votes, and even in the press accusing the United States of involving themselves in Iraq for the oil.

That is the international community that we would like to involve. I would remind my friends also that the United Nations cannot even have a definition, they do not have an established definition for terrorism because Syria sits on the Security Council, and Syria will not let our neighbors be characterized in any way as terrorists, and yet our friends call for the involvement of the international community, meaning the United Nations.

I would note that we pointed out last week in a similar venue that the media somehow has seemed to overlook this scandal. They go smelling around and looking for scandals any time the Bush administration makes a decision, but when the facts come to light in the United Nations' largest scandal ever, they simply ignore it.

They also have overlooked the 400,000 mass graves that have been found in Iraq and seem to be fixated on other problems overlooking the damages that were done during 35 years of Saddam Hussein.

I would like to associate myself with the comments by my other colleague from the other side of the aisle who said put Sandy Berger in jail. If it would help, I would second that and call for a vote immediately on the floor of the House.

It looks like Mr. Berger rolled up documents, stuck them in his underwear and stuck them in his socks and carried them out. These were documents that related to his service during the Clinton years and as it dealt with terrorism.

I suspect then that we begin to put some of the facts in place as we consider Richard Clarke's testimony where he began to tell the American people that there is absolutely no evidence that Iraq was ever supporting al Qaeda ever. This is Richard Clark who was the head terrorism expert under President Clinton.

If one looks back to his initial memos, immediately after 9/11, while the Nation is still sorting through the grief, Mr. Clarke is beginning to e-mail and memo his colleagues that we should begin to cover our trails. It looks like Mr. Berger may have been doing the same thing there in taking documents from the archives, continuing to cover trails that they felt like were damaging.

But the 9/11 Commission came out today with their final report today, Mr. Speaker, and we found several significant findings.
First of all, they declared that there was no smoking gun. The 9/11 Commission's report is very clear in its finding that the terrible events of September 11 could not reasonably have been prevented. The findings produce no smoking gun and place blame at the feet of no single individual or institution.

Furthermore, they go on to quote that since we believe that both President Clinton and President Bush were genuinely concerned about the danger posed by al Qaeda, approaches involving more direct intervention against the sanctuary in Afghanistan apparently must have seen, if they were considered at all, to be disproportionate to the threat. That is on page 349 of the document.

Furthermore, they commented that we do not believe, this is the 9/11 Commission quoting, that we do not believe it is possible to defeat all terrorist attacks against Americans every time and everywhere. A President should tell the American people no President can promise that a catastrophic attack like that of 9/11 will not happen. Again, history has shown us that even the most vigilant and expert agencies cannot always prevent determined, suicidal attackers from reaching a target. That is quoted on page 365.

The report goes on, Mr. Speaker, to establish a very clear link to al Qaeda, and I would remind this body about former Vice President Al Gore's quote. You will recall that in the height of his emotion about 60-days ago, former Vice President Al Gore quoted, the President convinced the country with a mixture of documents that turned out to be forged and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with al Qaeda. I suspect that we should see Mr. Gore coming out now to say that the 9/11 Commission was subjected to those same forged and blatantly false documents because the 9/11 Commission says that there is a clear link between Iraq and al Qaeda. The Commission's report provides ample evidence that there was a strong and real link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Quoting from the report, page 66, it describes similar meetings between Iraqi officials and bin Laden or his aids may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strings with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered bin Laden a safe haven in Iraq. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides hatred of the United States.

Again, on page 61, the 9/11 Commission finds that bin Laden himself met with senior Iraqi intelligence officers in Khartoum in late 1994 or 1995.

On page 66, again, the 9/11 Commission report quotes, in March 1998, after bin Laden's public plot against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with bin Laden.

Mr. Speaker, I suspect that Mr. Gore should apologize to the American people for blatant, false comments or he should provide the documentation for his rhetoric.

The 9/11 Commission, Mr. Speaker, also comments on the fixation on Iraq. Over the past year, there have been numerous reports from people in the media and from our friends on the other side of the aisle that the Bush administration was fixated on attacking Iraq in the wake of 9/11. However, the Commission's finding strongly refutes such a claim.

On page 335, the Commission quotes, Secretary Powell recalled that Wolfowitz, not Rumsfeld, argued that Iraq was ultimately the source of terrorist problems and should, therefore, be attacked. Powell said the President did not give Wolfowitz's argument much weight. Though continuing to worry about Iraq in the following week, Powell said President Bush saw Afghanistan as the priority.

It goes on on page 336 to quote that, on September 20, President Bush met with British prime minister Tony Blair and the two leaders discussed the global conflict ahead. When Blair asked about Iraq, the President replied that Iraq was not the immediate problem. Some members of his administration, he commented, had expressed a different view, but he was the one responsible for making the decision. Again, the September 11 Commission finds no fixation on Iraq.

Page 336, they continue speaking about General Franks, in quotes, Franks told that he was pushing independently to do more robust planning on military responses in Iraq during the summer before 9/11, a request President Bush denied, arguing that the time was not right. The CENTCOM commander told us he renewed his appeal for further military planning to respond to Iraqi moves shortly after 9/11. Franks said that President Bush again turned down the request.

So our friends on the other side of the aisle would like to characterize the attacks on 9/11 as being easy to contemplate, easy to forecast, and yet, the 9/11 Commission says it is not possible at all.

There is also great testimony on the other side that there was absolutely no link between Iraq and al Qaeda, and the 9/11 Commission report says blatantly that there was connection between the two. They also comment that President Bush did not have a fixation on Iraq, that actually he felt like the problems were elsewhere, Afghanistan or other places.

Finally, the 9/11 report, Mr. Speaker, comments about our urgent need in this country. It comments that perhaps the most powerful finding of the 9/11 Commission is that fighting the global war on terror is a total call to arms.

The Commission goes on to say that one of the key structural failures that the Commission identifies, referred to as a lack of imagination, that was the lack of the imagination of anyone in America to conceive that any persons could hate America so much as to do the attacks on 9/11. In failing to connect the isolated pieces of intelligence in the past, leaders did not understand the urgency because they underestimated the terrorists' singular goal of destroying every American.

Therefore, the September 11 report continues, one of the larger points that the Commission makes is that the war on terror is about killing terrorists before they kill us.

The report said that bin Laden and Islamic terrorists mean exactly what they say. To them, that is, to bin Laden and the terrorists, America is the font of all evil, the head of the snake, and it must be converted or destroyed. It is not in a position with which Americans can bargain or negotiate.

With it, there is no common ground, not even respect for life on which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or utterly isolated.

The report goes on to say that bin Laden said we do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians. They are all targets in the spotlight. That is, bin Laden is saying that if you are dressed in a uniform, you are no more of a military target than people walking on the streets in any town in Iowa, Michigan or New Mexico.

Furthermore, the report goes on to clarify that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing signaled a new terrorist challenge, one whose rage and malice had no limit. Again, this is the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, following on 10 years later with the more brutal attack.

But considering the 1993 attack Ramzi Yousef, the Sunni extremist who planted the bomb, said later that he had hoped to kill 250,000 people, all of those being Americans.

The recommendation on page 367 of this 9/11 report, this bipartisan report that just came out today, this month's long study of the 9/11 catastrophe, the recommendation is that the U.S. Government must identify and prioritize actual or potential terrorist sanctuaries. For each it should have a realistic strategy to keep possible terrorists insecure and on the run using all elements of national power.

Mr. Speaker, after 9/11, the President came on TV and said we must do three things. We must first of all uproot the Taliban to where they cannot continue to train and turn out terrorists onto the streets. We must uproot the Taliban from Afghanistan and its training camps. Secondly, we need to choke off the funding for the Taliban for the terrorists. Thirdly, we need to take the fight to them.

Mr. Speaker, in Afghanistan we did uproot the Taliban and put them on the run. They are not able to sit and take shots at us because they are in a defensive mode moving constantly. So the President followed through on the first of his objectives.
On the second objective, that is squeezing off funding to the terrorist groups worldwide, the President and members of the international community have done a very good job. Just recently, Secretary Powell reported that even in Saudi Arabia that the leaders there acknowledged within the last 30 days that they have a tremendous problem with terrorism and they committed to seek to end the funding that Saudi nationals have given to terrorists.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, in response to the third mantra that he laid out, the President did take the fight to the terrorists. Liberating Iraq is the right thing to do. He has taken the fight to them. He has uprooted them, and we have begun squeezing off their funding sources. Mr. Speaker, the only thing that could cause us to lose this war on terror is for us to lose our resolve.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. McCotter) at this time for observations that he has in dealing and talking with Iraqis here in this city this week.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.

Mr. Speaker, in the last year I have had the opportunity to meet a man in New Mexico and I have become friends with him. In looking at things he has in his story, I told him you have been in China for a very long time.

He said yes, since the late sixties.

I commented to him you had to be one of the only Americans there during that period of time. I said how did you go there?

He very truthfully and straightforwardly responded, and his comment was, "To my internal shame, I was invited to mainland China in the late sixties because of my campus radicalism. I went there with the greatest hope to help fight the war for communism and to spread it." He said, "I was not in China more than 30 minutes before I realized it was one of the deepest and biggest scams I had ever seen."

He continued to live in China, eventually marrying a Chinese woman. They watched as her father was carried to the edge of town and summarily shot.

Mr. Speaker, we defeated communism for the most part in this world because of the efforts of Ronald Reagan. But I feel like there is as much lack of truth in this argument about al Qaeda and Iraq and the dangers that terrorism presents to the United States and to the world today as there was back in the 1960s and 1970s about the Communist regimes throughout the world.

There is much work to be done if we are to find freedom and liberty for more people. Freedom and liberty cannot live together in the same world as terrorism. We are finding that out. What the world is going through right now is a decision process: Are we going to accept terrorism, or are we going to root terrorism out? Are we going to have liberty, or are we going to have tyranny? This is one of the most important discussions in our history because at this point terrorism has the potential to be spread worldwide.

Terrorism has as its main focus instability. The terrorists understand they could not militarily defeat the United States. Their attempt was to destabilize us financially. On 9/11, the high estimates are that over $2 trillion worth of losses occurred in the U.S. economy. $2 trillion represents almost 20 percent, Mr. Speaker, of our total economy. How many countries could have suffered that kind of loss and still bounced back with an economy where we could be concerned about the production of jobs? $2 trillion and over 3,000 lives in one split second. That is what happened on 9/11.

If the terrorists are not defeated at every turn, they have stated their intent to get vials of disease, to unleash chemical weapons, to unleash nuclear weapons. Whatever it takes to defeat freedom, they are willing to do. Those attacks on freedom are going to continue to be targeted at the United States first because they realize that this country is the heart and soul of freedom worldwide, that this country is a shining light of liberty to those countries that would aspire to it.

Mr. Speaker, we can make no mistake. We must choose sides in this. We cannot appease terrorists. We cannot act like it will get better. We have read into the RECORD earlier tonight an entire list, two pages, double-spaced, of attacks into the United States or to United States troops by terrorists. Mostly those went unresponded to, but President Bush made a bold decision that we will take the fight to the terrorists. He should be commended for his activities, Mr. Speaker, because it is that boldness that has forestalled any future attacks.

The investments in homeland security, the investments in our defense have been somewhat successful. I agree with the 9/11 report, though, that says that any President should promise the American people that we cannot fight a defensive battle all of the time. That is the reason I favor taking the fight to the terrorists. We must take the heart out of the fight for them. We must take the will to damage this country away from the heart of terrorism.

Mr. Speaker, the 9/11 Commission report gives us valuable information about this Nation's lack of preparedness, the lack of preparedness that extended across more than one administration. I would recommend that Members of this body on both sides of the aisle begin to discuss the findings of the 9/11 Commission, that commission which stated that there is a link between al Qaeda and Iraq, that there was no preoccupation with Iraq as far as President Bush is concerned, and, finally, that we must either kill the terrorists or accept that they are going to kill us.

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hensarling). The gentleman from New Mexico will suspend.