Iraq

IRAQ -- (House of Representatives - June 21, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gerlach). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader

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Mr. McCOTTER. Mr. Speaker, being from Detroit, I am often able to watch CBC, and last night I was privileged to watch Albert Finney's performance as Winston Churchill in a movie called "The Gathering Storm." And perhaps it was his finest hour, the former prime minister's. When Hitler was rearming, he stood in front of the House of Commons and warned his own conservative party's government, led by Stanley Baldwin, that Hitler was indeed more than prepared for war; that he was arming to instigate a new one.

Churchill was thought insane at the time, because no one, coming off the horror of the millions killed in World War I, could believe that a European leader would seek to rekindle that tinderbox, certainly not a corporal of the German army who had been blinded by mustard gas in combat. Yet Churchill was proven right.

And when we apply these lessons to our own time, one of the first things we can realize is that sometimes the forest is so menacing, we choose to stare at the tree which shields us, until it is too late.

Our Nation is in a war on terror. In this war on terror, Iraq is a theatre. It is not a war unto itself, any more than FDR's much-maligned, at the time, strike into north Africa was a diversion from the war against Hitler.

What we have seen in our time is the preemption doctrine applied, and what I have not heard anyone say is that the pillar upon which this administration entered into the Iraqi theatre in the war on terror did not achieve its result.

Saddam Hussein desired weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein had contacts without apparent collaboration, but contacts nonetheless, with terrorist groups and was, in fact, shielding terrorists like Abu Nidal in Baghdad.

Since the United States engaged in hostilities against Iraq, we can be sure of two things, the Saddam Hussein regime will never have weapons of mass destruction that can be used against the United States or its troops in the field, and the Saddam Hussein regime will never again have any contacts with any terrorist groups.

In some polls that are cited, we hear about people believing the link between al Qaeda and September 11; but one of the polls that I saw that was interesting was that about 70 percent of the American people realized that Saddam Hussein was a terrorist, and in the war on terror the states which sponsor terrorism are as much our enemies by enabling the terrorists, as the terrorists are our enemies themselves, for terrorist cells cannot exist without state sponsorship, without state succor.

Now, put yourself in President Bush's position at the time post-September 11. You have seen reports from the past administration up through his present administration detailing contacts, "shadowy with terrorists," including bin Laden.

You know that Saddam Hussein wants to engage a weapons of mass destruction program for their acquisition, and you say to yourself, what am I going to do?

The President of the United States in applying the preemption doctrine made sure, again, that two things would not happen: the Saddam Hussein regime would not have weapons of mass destruction, ever, and that they would no longer be able to even be considered for succor as a terrorist haven.

Now, there were some important points brought up in the earlier debate, and I would be more than happy to come back tomorrow or at any time to assist to talk about some of those points with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle; but I find it fascinating some of the points.

Now, we are splitting hairs when we say that the contact between Iraq and al Qaeda in hindsight may not have appeared to have formed a collaboration. Yet, we cannot say whether they would or not. Now, to try to destroy that link or denigrate that link, we will hear that these contacts were meetings, but Iraq never responded.

Now, all of us here in the U.S. House have to get elected. Now, as politicians, put yourselves in an interesting position. Consider this: you are sitting around getting ready to run for re-election. An opponent you have defeated in the past is having coffee on a regular basis with the opponent running against you now. Do you say to yourself, well, I am sure they are just having pleasantries and this has absolutely nothing to do with me, and that while they be having contact, there is apparently no collaboration that they are out to get me? I highly doubt many of the people in this room would ascribe to the latter theory. If Saddam Hussein could, he would do anything to hurt the United States.

Now, why would bin Laden and his associates that are in captivity deny any link with al Qaeda? Al Qaeda's premise, on a perverted facade of Islam, is to work with the secular Ba'athist regime under Saddam Hussein, but undermine its very credibility as it goes after Saudi Arabia and other regimes in that region.

Now, the ones in captivity like al-Anni that were referenced before, I would just caution everyone, do not take a terrorist at their word unless they say they are going to kill you, because whether in captivity or not, there is no incentive to prove any member of the United States' present administration was correct, and there is certainly no impetus for these people to undermine the very position, belie the very myth of al Qaeda as an Islamic group trying to liberate its people and lead them to a greater life in Islam. So I would caution against that.

I also would like to just reiterate something that I think is very troubling to me, that we hear many people saying that our ability to preemptively deal with the situation in Iraq has somehow hurt us internationally. I suppose there will always be those people who believe that when the United States has to defend itself that we will be hurting ourselves. This is mistaken.

In fact, many of these same people never credit the good will of the acts of the United States in the immunization of Iraqi children or the education of Iraqi children or the free speech and association that is occurring in Iraq today. I would argue that over the long term, these benefits to the United States are going to outweigh any short-term anger that the terrorist organizations may feel, because we are striking a blow at them in the heart of the terrorist network.

I also have not heard about how the regime change and reconstruction nexus that has been applied in Iraq has also led to the regime conversion and potential rehabilitation of the Libyan regime, which also not only in that regard shows what strength and resolve have done in Iraq.

I think that one of the things that has been missed when Qadhafi admitted he has a weapons program, he invited weapons inspectors in, who were then led to the labs or testing facilities of the Libyan Government. Some of the inspectors pointed out that they would never have found these unless they were shown. Dr. Kay, who I have much respect for, when I met with him in Baghdad did not say that we had weapons of mass destruction, to his credit. But he did say that Saddam Hussein and his regime were actively engaging in re-energizing to try to acquire them, especially chemical and biological, which could have been generated in 2 weeks to 2 months.

If we had trouble finding extant technologies for weapons production in Libya, even with the Libyans' assistance, it should come as no surprise that in Iraq we are having extreme difficulty finding not only the weapons of mass destruction, if they exist themselves, but the labs or the scientists who were trying to accumulate them, because, as Dr. Kay pointed out, the trouble we have in Iraq is that many of the scientists whom we would go to to try to find this information are being killed or are frightened.

I eagerly await to see what the fruits of security once it is firmly established in Iraq will yield to us in terms of intelligence regarding the weapons program and its state; and if there were any weapons, where did they go once the scientists and others in the community that participated in these programs feel that they are free of the threat of assassination or other reprisals to themselves or their family for sharing this information with the United States of America.

In conclusion, I would like to add just one personal point. I will not condemn the Clinton administration for what it did not do prior to September 11, but I would hope that others would be slow to condemn the Bush administration for what it has done since September 11 in defending the interests of the United States. In many ways, I do understand what occurred under the Clinton administration. While I was not one who was swayed at the time, when we defeated European Communism, we saw books from left and right proclaiming to the United States that the end of history was here, that we had peace dividends, that our future was bright, that we could go on to the task of perfecting the American experiment in democracy by addressing internal problems, such as education, race relations, poverty, hunger, injustice; and on September 11 that was taken from us.

What was foisted upon us was an unsought struggle against extremists perverting the tenets of Islam. Our generation and all the generations have to face the fact that once again we are called to our historic duty to defend freedom and civilization from every would-be tyrant bent upon world domination. On September 11, we went from sorrow to anger.

But it is fair for us to also feel frustration that a country as great as ours, that has offered the world so much, could be so lowly stricken and have to deal with this type of aggressor yet again. It is unfair, but it is here.

As I said at the beginning, it is a menacing forest; but the trees will not shield us from the truth any longer, and we must accept the fate that we now share and succeed and continue with our resolve in the overarching war on terror to do one thing: it is to kill the terrorists before they kill us, to kill the terrorists before they kill our children; and it is to win the war on terror in our lifetimes.