Unfinished Story of Iraqi WMD
Pookie
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Speaking routinely now with Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard and John
Loftus of IntelligenceSummit.org and also my best source with regard the
Byzantine tale of the Iraqi WMD program that cannot be proved or unproved by
the public record of facts established since the capture of Baghdad in April
2003.
I mention again the promising mysterious treasure said to be coming to all
of us within the next month. John Loftus is in possession of a CD that came
to him by a reportedly trustworthy route that represents a collection of
recorded sessions from 1988 to early this century (perhaps as late as 2002)
in which Saddam Hussein plots with thirty other voices to supervise and
conceal WMD.
The voice of Saddam Hussein is now verified by trustworthy agent; the voice
of Tariq Aziz is verified by trustworthy agent. Blix and ElBaredi are said
to be mentioned most disparingly and or damangingly. The core topic is how
to manipulate inquiries and searches for WMD, after the Gulf War I, 1990-91,
during the UN inspection regime from 1991-98, after the inspectors returned
to Baghdad in 2002.
Why did Saddam Hussein order the recordings? Working assumption is that
Saddam Hussein intended to write a book about how he had fooled and defeated
UNSCOM and UNMOVIC and the rest of the sanctions first and last crowd.
More intriguingly is the fact that the CD is a compilation of many long
sessions. Where are the original recording tapes? The search is said to be
underway in the mountains of unexplored captured documents that is the focus
of the operation called DOCEX.
Best source confirms that the undiscovered story of Iraqi WMDs is in plain
sight and has been since the war. The most dangerous material was moved to
Syria, and some of it to Lebanon; major weapons systems were also moved to
Syria during the April 2003 fighting. Other reports point to undiscovered
storage facilities underground in west Baghdad; other reports point to
transfers to Iran.
These reports have not changed or diminished in the nearly three years since
the March 2003 invasion.
What also has not changed or diminished is the political threat to many
(from Damascus to the DNC) when (and not if) the full story of the Iraqi
regime WMD is revealed and told.
http://www.spectator.org/blogger_comments.asp?BlogID=1642
cajunmo...@gmail.com
Pookie wrote:
> Unfinished Story of Iraqi WMD
That title should read: More WMD conspiracy theories from neocon
crazies.
Stevel
Crap
See This Now!
<cajunmo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1138561907.7...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
If it's from "Pookie" you know it's delusional crackpot dribble.
GW Chimpzilla
> Unfinished Story of Iraqi WMD
> Saturday, January 28, 2006
> Speaking routinely now with Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard and John
> Loftus of IntelligenceSummit.org and also my best source with regard the
> Byzantine tale of the Iraqi WMD program that cannot be proved or unproved by
> the public record of facts established since the capture of Baghdad in April
> 2003.
>
Give it up already, wingnut!
dh
news:Vj8Df.32$Bn1...@fe08.lga...
> Unfinished Story of Iraqi WMD
> Saturday, January 28, 2006
> Speaking routinely now with Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard and John
> Loftus of IntelligenceSummit.org and also my best source with regard the
> Byzantine tale of the Iraqi WMD program that cannot be proved or unproved
by
> the public record of facts established since the capture of Baghdad in
April
> 2003.
>
Say, Pook, if there's WMD in Iraq, why hasn't Bush triumphantly announced
it?
Pookie
Iraqi General Sada is a crazy neocon?
Pookie
"dh" <d...@stargate.com> wrote in message
news:43dd1bc5$0$4445$6d36...@titian.nntpserver.com...
They're in Syria...
cajunmo...@gmail.com
Pookie wrote:
> Iraqi General Sada is a crazy neocon?
Those who believe his laughable claims about WMD are crazy neocons.
raya...@yahoo.com
ANOTHER IRAQ !!!!
Pookie
<cajunmo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1138565945.6...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>
> Pookie wrote:
>
> > Iraqi General Sada is a crazy neocon?
>
> Those who believe his laughable claims about WMD are crazy neocons.
Iraq's WMD Secreted in Syria, Sada Says
BY IRA STOLL - Staff Reporter of the Sun
January 26, 2006
The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says
Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading
the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were
removed.
The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, "Saddam's
Secrets," released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview
yesterday with The New York Sun.
"There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they
must be found and returned to safe hands," Mr. Sada said. "I am confident
they were taken over."
Mr. Sada's comments come just more than a month after Israel's top general
during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam
"transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."
Democrats have made the absence of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq a theme in their criticism of the Bush administration's decision to
go to war in 2003. And President Bush himself has conceded much of the
point; in a televised prime-time address to Americans last month, he said,
"It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass
destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong."
Said Mr. Bush, "We did not find those weapons."
The discovery of the weapons in Syria could alter the American political
debate on the Iraq war. And even the accusations that they are there could
step up international pressure on the government in Damascus. That
government, led by Bashar Assad, is already facing a U.N. investigation over
its alleged role in the assassination of a former prime minister of Lebanon.
The Bush administration has criticized Syria for its support of terrorism
and its failure to cooperate with the U.N. investigation.
The State Department recently granted visas for self-proclaimed opponents of
Mr. Assad to attend a "Syrian National Council" meeting in Washington
scheduled for this weekend, even though the attendees include communists,
Baathists, and members of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood group to the
exclusion of other, more mainstream groups.
Mr. Sada, 65, told the Sun that the pilots of the two airliners that
transported the weapons of mass destruction to Syria from Iraq approached
him in the middle of 2004, after Saddam was captured by American troops.
"I know them very well. They are very good friends of mine. We trust each
other. We are friends as pilots," Mr. Sada said of the two pilots. He
declined to disclose their names, saying they are concerned for their
safety. But he said they are now employed by other airlines outside Iraq.
The pilots told Mr. Sada that two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to
cargo planes by removing the seats, Mr. Sada said. Then Special Republican
Guard brigades loaded materials onto the planes, he said, including "yellow
barrels with skull and crossbones on each barrel." The pilots said there was
also a ground convoy of trucks.
The flights - 56 in total, Mr. Sada said - attracted little notice because
they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to
Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in June of 2002.
"Saddam realized, this time, the Americans are coming," Mr. Sada said. "They
handed over the weapons of mass destruction to the Syrians."
Mr. Sada said that the Iraqi official responsible for transferring the
weapons was a cousin of Saddam Hussein named Ali Hussein al-Majid, known as
"Chemical Ali." The Syrian official responsible for receiving them was a
cousin of Bashar Assad who is known variously as General Abu Ali, Abu Himma,
or Zulhimawe.
Short of discovering the weapons in Syria, those seeking to validate Mr.
Sada's claim independently will face difficulty. His book contains a
foreword by a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, David Eberly, who was a
prisoner of war in Iraq during the first Gulf War and who vouches for Mr.
Sada, who once held him captive, as "an honest and honorable man."
In his visit to the Sun yesterday, Mr. Sada was accompanied by Terry Law,
the president of a Tulsa, Oklahoma based Christian humanitarian organization
called World Compassion. Mr. Law said he has known Mr. Sada since 2002,
lived in his house in Iraq and had Mr. Sada as a guest in his home in
America. "Do I believe this man? Yes," Mr. Law said. "It's been solid down
the line and everything checked out."
Said Mr. Law, "This is not a publicity hound. This is a man who wants peace
putting his family on the line."
Mr. Sada acknowledged that the disclosures about transfers of weapons of
mass destruction are "a very delicate issue." He said he was afraid for his
family. "I am sure the terrorists will not like it. The Saddamists will not
like it," he said.
He thanked the American troops. "They liberated the country and the nation.
It is a liberation force. They did a great job," he said. "We have been
freed."
He said he had not shared his story until now with any American officials.
"I kept everything secret in my heart," he said. But he is scheduled to meet
next week in Washington with Senators Sessions and Inhofe, Republicans of,
respectively, Alabama and Oklahoma. Both are members of the Senate Armed
Services Committee.
The book also says that on the eve of the first Gulf War, Saddam was
planning to use his air force to launch a chemical weapons attack on Israel.
When, during an interview with the Sun in April 2004, Vice President Cheney
was asked whether he thought that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had been
moved to Syria, Mr. Cheney replied only that he had seen such reports.
An article in the Fall 2005 Middle East Quarterly reports that in an
appearance on Israel's Channel 2 on December 23, 2002, Israel's prime
minister, Ariel Sharon, stated, "Chemical and biological weapons which
Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria." The
allegation was denied by the Syrian government at the time as "completely
untrue," and it attracted scant American press attention, coming as it did
on the eve of the Christmas holiday.
The Syrian ruling party and Saddam Hussein had in common the ideology of
Baathism, a mixture of Nazism and Marxism.
Syria is one of only eight countries that has not signed the Chemical
Weapons Convention, a treaty that obligates nations not to stockpile or use
chemical weapons. Syria's chemical warfare program, apart from any weapons
that may have been received from Iraq, has long been the source of concern
to America, Israel, and Lebanon. In March 2004, the director of Central
Intelligence, George Tenet, testified before the Senate Armed Services
Committee, saying, "Damascus has an active CW development and testing
program that relies on foreign suppliers for key controlled chemicals
suitable for producing CW."
The CIA's Iraq Survey Group acknowledged in its September 30, 2004,
"Comprehensive Report," "we cannot express a firm view on the possibility
that WMD elements were relocated out of Iraq prior to the war. Reports of
such actions exist, but we have not yet been able to investigate this
possibility thoroughly."
Mr. Sada is an unusual figure for an Iraqi general as he is a Christian and
was not a member of the Baath Party. He now directs the Iraq operations of
the Christian humanitarian organization, World Compassion.
http://www.nysun.com/article/26514?page_no=3
Pookie
<raya...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1138565949.9...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Are you sure ? Do you have concrete VERIFICATION ? We DON'T WANT
> ANOTHER IRAQ !!!!
We doesn't include the 27 million freed Iraqis...
It'll come out...
cajunmo...@gmail.com
Pookie wrote:
> Iraq's WMD Secreted in Syria, Sada Says
Without PROOF what Sada says is as important as what Simon says.
Do you know what PROOF is?
Pookie
<cajunmo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1138566551.8...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
He has more proof than a cajunmousetrap, you're just not interested as
you're really an ostrich...
gah...@comcast.net
make fun out of the government during the war, now you want to cite it
as a source? Trying to have it both ways? Didn't you extremists tell
the American people that the Iraqi's can't be trusted, but now you want
us to trust them?
Keep trying....that babble about the WMD's in Syria is an old story
anyway.
Didn't Bush concede that there weren't any WMD's? Is he lying about
that or lying saying they are in Iraq in 2003?
If the arms were moved out of Iraq, wouldn't that have shown up on the
spy photos? Remember the mobile biological labs?
BTW, if you believe in this cause, why aren't you in Syria trying to
find them, anyway?
Non-demopublican Voter
> Unfinished Story of Iraqi WMD
> Saturday, January 28, 2006
> Speaking routinely now with Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard and John
> Loftus of IntelligenceSummit.org and also my best source with regard the
> Byzantine tale of the Iraqi WMD program that cannot be proved or
> unproved by the public record of facts established since the capture of
> Baghdad in April 2003.
>
> I mention again the promising mysterious treasure said to be coming to
> all of us within the next month. John Loftus is in possession of a CD
> that came to him by a reportedly trustworthy route that represents a
> collection of recorded sessions from 1988 to early this century (perhaps
> as late as 2002) in which Saddam Hussein plots with thirty other voices
> to supervise and conceal WMD.
>
Golly! Did the CIA verify the voices as genuine?
And it only took 3 years to come up with this gem!
D. Wells
It's funny, the rest of the world including the previous
administration and the UN thought Hussein's Iraq had WMDs. Hussein
certainly did nothing to dispel that since he refused to fully
cooperate with them.
Dulfer verified he had WMD programs still.
And even before the war there was speculation that Hussein might
spirit the WMDs off to some friendly Arab neighbor such as Syria.
Because even a third-world thug can anticipate what a political
catastrophe it would be and it's not as if they didn't have the time
to do it as Bush was dutifully lobbying the UN Sec Council.
But when they weren't immediately found the American left charged the
Administration with lies despite the conspicuous lack of substance to
this charge.
Now that you post this latest evidience (albiet not yet conclusive)
their knee-jerk reaction is to call you a crack-pot, the source devoid
of credibility and the very idea preposterous.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
cajunmo...@gmail.com
Pookie wrote:
> He has more proof than a cajunmousetrap, you're just not interested as
> you're really an ostrich...
Just as I thought... you have no idea what PROOF is.
Pookie
<cajunmo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1138575280....@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Yes, proof to you is when you read something in The Daily Kos, MoveOn.org or
Media Matters.
Pookie
"D. Wells" <wells...@insightbb.net> wrote in message
news:f8hqt1tqrdft21dnj...@4ax.com...
I'm not. This got the same reaction...
Iraq's WMD Secreted in Syria, Sada Says
http://www.nysun.com/article/26514?page_no=1
cajunmo...@gmail.com
Pookie wrote:
> Yes, proof to you is when you read something in The Daily Kos, MoveOn.org or
> Media Matters.
I see you can't think beyond the simpleton right wing talking points.
One more time... there is NO PROOF that any WMD went to Syria.
Julian D.
Question is, will Syria be willing to provide the proof?
Julian D.
"But if we must engage in a national debate on half-measures:
After 9/11, any president who was not spying on people calling
phone numbers associated with terrorists should be impeached for
being an inept commander in chief."
-Ann Coulter
"The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing
their memory, or their backbone, but we're not going to sit by and
let them rewrite history." -- Dick Cheney 11/16/2005
"If somebody from al-Qaida is calling you, we'd like to know why."
- President George W. Bush - January 1, 2006
"Iran will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons."
- President George W. Bush, 2004
Pookie
<cajunmo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1138584615.3...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
& what does a libloon like you consider to be proof?
cajunmo...@gmail.com
Julian D. wrote:
> Question is, will Syria be willing to provide the proof?
Syria doesn't need to offer any proof that right wing freaks embrace
stupid WMD conspiracy theories.
cajunmo...@gmail.com
Pookie wrote:
> & what does a libloon like you consider to be proof?
1. The evidence or argument that compels the mind to accept an
assertion as true.
2 a.The validation of a proposition by application of specified rules,
as of induction or deduction, to assumptions, axioms, and sequentially
derived conclusions.
b. A statement or argument used in such a validation.
3. a. Convincing or persuasive demonstration: was asked for proof of
his identity; an employment history that was proof of her
dependability.
b. The state of being convinced or persuaded by consideration of
evidence.
2. Determination of the quality of something by testing; trial: put
one's beliefs to the proof.
3. Law. The result or effect of evidence; the establishment or denial
of a fact by evidence.
Pookie
<cajunmo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1138591175....@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
What, specifically, does a libloon like YOU want? Would you like these
"phony" chemical weapons to be used on you?
dh
> The pilots told Mr. Sada that two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to
> cargo planes by removing the seats, Mr. Sada said. Then Special Republican
> Guard brigades loaded materials onto the planes, he said, including
"yellow
> barrels with skull and crossbones on each barrel." The pilots said there
was
> also a ground convoy of trucks.
>
> The flights - 56 in total, Mr. Sada said - attracted little notice because
> they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to
> Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in June of 2002.
>
So, we've got a couple witnesses with axes to grind or asses to save and 56
flights to Syria, through our no-fly zone, without a whisper on all the
marvelous ELINT, which we're using to keep away Al-Qaeda and chase down
dangerous tree-huggers, about what was really going on with the WMD? Plus
the 30 or so Iraqi ex-pats who were re-infiltrated to Iraq who all came back
saying, "ain't got none" and you still think they're out there?
R-i-i-i-g-h-t. Which parallel universe are you posting from?
Pookie
cajunmo...@gmail.com
Pookie wrote:
> What, specifically, does a libloon like YOU want? Would you like these
> "phony" chemical weapons to be used on you?
What chemical weapons are you talking about?
Pookie
<cajunmo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1138710860.6...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Ah...ye ol' circular reasoning...
BC
> > > What, specifically, does a libloon like YOU want? Would you like these
> > "phony" chemical weapons to be used on you?
> > What chemical weapons are you talking about?
> Ah...ye ol' circular reasoning...
Yeah, that WMD evidence is coming any day now -- the
world waits with baited breath, on the edge of their
collective seats, with giddy anticipation, all their hopes
and dreams to be finally realized....
-BC
Pookie
"BC" <call...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1138729424.4...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Why don't you speed up the process since you think you have all the answers?
BC
What's to speed up? All the *real* evidence to date indicates
that Hussein's WMD program went away in the mid-90's, but
that he tried to make Iran at least think that he still had them.
The Iraq Survey Group report said that Iraq's WMD program was
basically destroyed in 1991 and that Saddam ended his nuclear
program after the 1991 Gulf War. And in a March 2005
addendum, Duelfer added "it was unlikely that an official transfer
of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Survey_Group
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/index.html
While Hussein supported the Palestinian terrorists and made
a lot of noise about being an enemy of Israel, his real concern
was always about Iran. Him wanting nukes was all about
offsetting what he saw as Iran's advantage there. This was
in the "nuclear" part in that CIA link above:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/chap4.html
To quote:
"Nevertheless, after 1991, Saddam did express his intent to
retain the intellectual capital developed during the Iraqi Nuclear
Program. Senior Iraqis-several of them from the Regime's
inner circle-told ISG they assumed Saddam would restart a
nuclear program once UN sanctions ended.
* Saddam indicated that he would develop the weapons
necessary to counter any Iranian threat."
In order to understand what was up with Hussein and all the
WMD charges, you have to look back at the Iran-Iraq war and
who supplied Iraq with weapons, including biological WMD's:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/arming_iraq.php
Our Keyhole spy satellites can pick out someone pissing
in the street -- they would have certainly picked out Hussein
sneaking stuff to Syria and where they went to. The reason
you don't hear the Bush administration touting all this new
right wing WMD nonsense by Stephen Hayes and the like
is because it is nonsense. They won't discourage it though
because it keeps conservatives/right-wingers falsely hopeful
by proxy that maybe not everything told to them about why
Iraq was invaded is just a big fat lie.
But you know what? Everything Bush and his people said
was and still is just a big fat lie.
-BC
Pookie
Well then, here are some more "big fat lies" heard in the senate today:
NATIONAL SECURITY -- (Senate - January 30, 2006)
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I am not here, people will be glad to know, to
talk about Judge Alito. I am here as an assignment. Serving on the Senate
Armed Services Committee, as is the keeper of the chair, I have been there
for quite a number of years. I have taken the assignment of giving a grade
as to what President Bush, prior to his State of the Union Message tomorrow
night, has done in the way of national security and national defense. I am
proud to say that I am very proud of the job he has done. In doing this,
what I would like to do is break it down into three segments.
First, I want to talk about the problems this President inherited when he
became President in terms of our national security; second, the solutions,
the very impressive solutions so far to these problems; and third, the
challenges he has for the future, for the next 2 or 3 years. In doing this,
I know I will come across as being very partisan. Quite frankly, when we are
dealing with national defense, I am quite partisan. I think the most
important thing we have to do here is to keep America strong, make sure that
we have a strong national defense system. I hate to say it, but that becomes
a partisan issue. However, it is too serious of an issue to try to be
diplomatic, so I will not attempt to be diplomatic tonight. I will be
dealing with the truth.
Winston Churchill said: Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it,
ignorance may deride it, malice may destroy it, but there it is.
First, in dealing with the problems that he inherited, I would like to
outline seven huge problems that this President inherited when he became
President. The first is, when he was inaugurated he received a military
structure that was in total disarray. During the Clinton administration in
the 1990s, I will show you in terms of dollars what happened to our system.
There was a euphoric attitude everyone had that somehow the Cold War was
over and we did not need a military anymore.
This is what the Clinton administration did. If you take this line right
here, this is kind of the baseline only increased by inflation. So by doing
this, we would say if that President had taken the baseline, the
appropriations that he came in with and just applied the inflationary rate,
it would be that top line, the black line. However, he didn't do it.
Instead, with his budget, this yellow line is what he requested.
Fortunately, we in Congress were able to get this up to what I see as a
green line here. So this is actually what happened right here. This is what
was actually appropriated. This would have been a static system. This is
what the President wanted.
What does that mean? It means that during the years he was President, he
decreased spending from the level where it was by $313 billion. If we had
not raised the amount that was in his budget, his budget called for a
decrease of $412 billion. We are talking about the difference between the
black line and the red line. It means that the Clinton-Gore administration
cut the budget by 40 percent, reducing it to the lowest percentage of gross
national product since before World War II.
The first 2 years of the Clinton administration, I was in the House of
Representatives. I was on the House Armed Services Committee. I knew what he
was going to be doing to our military. I started complaining about this
during the first 2 years of his administration. Then as I saw it taking
place, we were on the floor at least every week or two talking about what
this President was doing to our military.
When they say the Cold War is over, we don't need a military anymore, I
look wistfully back to the days of the Cold War. During the Cold War, we
knew we had one superpower out there. It was the Soviet Union. We knew what
they had. They were predictable. Their attitudes were predictable. They
represented a great country, the U.S.S.R. We knew pretty much where we were.
We had a policy that was in place. It was a military that stood up to an
Eastern Bloc type of mentality. It was one that was working quite well.
During the time of the 1990s, during the Clinton drawdown of the
military, one particular general comes to mind. I considered him to be a
hero because it took courage. It is hard to explain to real people, as I go
back to Oklahoma, how much courage it takes for someone to stand up against
his own President if he is in the military. These are career people. GEN
John Jumper, who later became the Chief of the Air Force, stood up in 1998
or 1999 and said: This insane drawdown of our military is something we
cannot continue.
Not only were we drawing down to almost 60 percent, in terms of Army
divisions, of our tactical airwings, our ships were coming down from 600 to
300, but also our modernization program.
So General Jumper, with all the credibility that he had--and there is no
one in America more credible than he is--was able to say that we have a very
serious problem and we now are sending our kids out in strike vehicles where
the prospective enemy has better equipment than we do.
People don't realize it. When I go back to Oklahoma, I say: Do you
realize some countries make better fighting equipment. For instance, five
countries make a better artillery piece than the very best one that we have,
which is the Paladin.
John Jumper said: Our best strike vehicles are the F-15 and F-16. The
Russians are now making the SU-27, the SU-30s, and are proposing to make the
SU-35. Those vehicles are better than the best ones we have in terms of
jammers and radar.
I could get more specific in how they were better, but they were better.
I agreed with him at the time and said so and applauded him when he made the
statement that we need to move on with the FA-22 so we can get back and be
competitive again.
People wonder why the liberals and, I say, the Democrats do not support a
strong national defense. There are some reasons for this. One of the things
we have in this country, which people don't stop and really think through,
is the convention system. It is kind of a miracle. In a living room in
Broken Arrow, OK, Republicans all meet and they decide what we stand for. We
stand for a strong national defense, we are pro-life, all that stuff. At the
same time, across the street you have the Democrats meeting. They are
talking about gay rights and abortion and all the things they stand for.
They decide what delegates go to the county convention. So the most activist
of each side, liberals and conservatives, become the people who end up going
to the conventions. Then they go to the district convention, the State
convention, and then the national convention.
The bottom line is, if any Republican wants to run for the Senate or for
the House or for a higher position, that person has to embrace the
philosophy, at least partially, that is adopted by his party in the national
convention of the Republican Party. It is a conservative agenda. For the
Democratic Party, it is liberal agenda. That is a long way around the barn,
but it kind of explains as to why these Members of the Senate from the
Democratic side are not strong in terms of a national defense.
It is because if you really look at a liberal, they don't think you need
a military to start with. Liberals believe that if all countries would stand
in a circle and hold hands and unilaterally disarm, all threats would go
away. They don't say that, but that is what they really think. So we have
these people running for President on the Democratic side, and they don't
want to perform in terms of what the needs are from a national security
standpoint.
I said at the outset, there are two things unique to America. The other
one is, we are so privileged in this country. If people at home want to know
how JIM INHOFE, as a Member of the Senate, or any other Republican or
Democratic Member of the Senate or House is voting, they can find out
because we are ranked and rated on a daily basis. If you are back home and
wondering what your Member of Congress is doing and somehow your concern is
taxes, the National Taxpayers Union ranks all of us in terms of what we do
and what we feel in terms of taxes. If we want to increase taxes or decrease
taxes, they know.
They don't have to listen to us because, unfortunately, a lot of the
Members of the Senate and the House go back home and lie to the people. They
tell them they are for reducing taxes when, in fact, they vote to increase
taxes.
If you are concerned about whether you are a conservative, then the
American Conservative Union ranks every Member of the Senate, every Member
of the House in terms of whether they are conservative or liberal. I bring
that up because they happen to have me as the most conservative Member this
last year. I was very proud of that ranking.
If you are concerned and you are back in Sapulpa, OK, wondering which
Members are voting for a more favorable climate for small business, the
National Federation of Independent Business ranks each one of us as to what
our attitude is insofar as business issues.
I say that because if you want to know how we are voting on national
security issues or on national defense issues, the Center for Security
Policy is a ranking organization that ranks each one of us. I could name 30
or 40 of them. Ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,
confirmation of John Bolton, missile defense filibuster, the American
Missile Protection Act--these are all things that have to do with defending
America. This is significant and people need to know it. The way we are
ranked in accordance with how we vote for national defense issues, the most
recent report shows that the Republicans voted in favor of national security
82 percent of the time. The Democrats voted prosecurity and prodefense 21
percent of the time. That tells you why defending America is a partisan
issue.
We all know what happened during the hollow force that followed the
Carter administration. We saw what Reagan had to do to rebuild our defenses.
He did it. Now we have a situation where we are going through essentially
the same thing. The Bush administration inherited the Clinton military and
had to start building on it. That is a serious problem, but he has done a
good job.
I said there are seven things that this President inherited. The second
thing is an economy that was set up to fall. We all know now that we went
into the recession in March of 2000. That was prior to the time that
President Bush came into office. So he inherited this recession. People have
asked: What does that have to do with national security? What does that have
to do with national defense? It has a lot to do with it because each 1
percent of increase in economic activity translates to $46 billion in new
revenue. So if we are 5 or 6 percent down during a recession, that is money
that the President can't spend.
I often say to my conservative friends when I go back to Oklahoma and
they are complaining about the deficit--and you hear the ranting and raving
from this side that Republicans are responsible for it--they have to realize
that this President not only inherited a military that had to be built up,
he also inherited an economy that was down in the cellar and, of course, he
had to prosecute a war. That is a serious problem. That is the second thing
this President inherited.
The third thing this President inherited were the international
challenges that have become threatening to this country. In Iraq, the
failure of the Oil-for-Food Program, we all know about that. We know about
Saddam Hussein taking the money and using it for other purposes and denying
the weapons inspectors access to the country, as he had agreed to do. All
these things were happening in Iraq. Sometimes I look at the way people were
trying to--I don't think they are trying anymore--talk about weapons of mass
destruction. That wasn't the real issue at the time. When you stop and
realize, if we hadn't gone in and done what we did to Saddam Hussein, we
would have more of what we had for the 12 years, between the first and the
second Persian Gulf wars.
Let me explain that a little bit. The first freedom fight came in 1991,
after the first Persian Gulf war. I was one of nine people selected to go on
the first freedom fight. Alexander Hague went, and a Democrat, Tony Cohelo,
went. We had one person I will not mention. We had a prominent Kuwaiti
citizen, one of nobility, and his 7-year-old daughter. All they could talk
about was they wanted to go back and see what their home looked like after
the demise took place in the first Persian Gulf war. We found that their
home--this was the day after the war was over. At that time, the Iraqis
didn't even know the war was over. They were still burning the oilfields. We
went to their home on the Persian Gulf, which was a beautiful palace, only
to find that--the individual and his daughter who were with us on this first
freedom fight found out that Saddam Hussein had used that particular house
for a headquarters. I took the 7-year-old girl up to her room--she wanted to
see her animals--only to find that her bedroom was used as a torture
chamber. There were ears and body parts scattered about the place. Twelve
years following that, one of the bloodiest regimes took place, with the
torturing of individuals. They were shredding people, and they would beg to
be put into the shredder head first to avoid the pain. It was the same with
vats of acid. Babies were taken from their mothers; they were taken by their
arms and banged against a brick wall until they were dead. This happened for
a long period of time. And people think the only reason to go in there was
for weapons of mass destruction.
There is something kind of interesting happening right now that I don't
think even the Presiding Officer is aware of, and that is there is an
individual I met in my office in Oklahoma, a former general in the Iraqi
Army. He was an air general of the Air Force in Iraq, Georges Sada. There is
a book he has written, which is out today, called ``Sadam's Secrets.'' He
witnessed what they did with the weapons of mass destruction. They took them
and put them into various aircraft and took them across the Syrian border.
It is all in this book. He was on ``Hannity and Colmes'' about 4 days ago.
Watch for this guy, Georges Sada. He will let you know that there were
weapons of mass destruction. We knew that anyway because he used them on
some 200,000 people that he was able to painfully kill using chemical
weapons.
But I say that not because we have now solved the mystery of the weapons
of mass destruction because that never was important. What was important was
the things we knew when we went into Iraq.
Let me tell you the most significant thing and the greatest victory that
we could not talk about at that time, which was the three major terrorist
training camps that were located in Iraq--Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak.
We broke those as soon as we brought down Saddam Hussein.
I said there were seven things the President inherited--a downgraded
military, a broken economy, and one was the national security challenge. The
fourth one is international terrorism. We had with bin Laden--and during the
Clinton administration we remember a lot of things that did happen. We had
the 1993 car bomb that went off in the basement of the World Trade Center.
We saw, in 1996, Khobar Towers blow up. We remember the embassies in Dar es
Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, that were blown up in 1998. We
remember, of course, the USS Cole in Yemen, when a little boat floated up
and killed a bunch of our sailors. The Clinton response was comparatively
benign, restrained and, at best, inconsistent. The operation ``Infinite
Reach'' included cruise missile strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan, which
were not the problem. But that was during the Lewinsky scandal, so nobody
paid much attention to that.
The fifth thing was the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
This is something we saw. When the Soviet Union fell, when the vast nuclear
stockpile kind of disappeared--we had people going up there, including
brokers--and then we could only identify some 30 or 40 percent of that which
was stolen from the massive stockpile that the Soviets had put together.
That means there is about 60 to 70 percent of the stolen stockpile out
there, and we are not sure where that is.
During this time, AQ Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program,
began an international network of clandestine nuclear proliferation to
Libya, Iran, and North Korea.
I remember one thing that happened because I was in this body at that
time and a member of the Armed Services Committee. I was trying to get the
point across that even though President Clinton's staff had said we don't
have a problem in terms of North Korea, I asked the question--I wrote a
letter to the Clinton administration on August 24, of 1998 and I asked the
question: How long will it be until North Korea has multiple-stage rockets
that could send a missile that could reach the United States. I got a reply
back, but it wasn't in writing--they didn't want to put it in writing. They
said it would be 5 to 10 years before they will have that capability. Seven
days later, on August 31 in 1998, the North Koreans fired a multiple-stage
rocket with the capability of reaching America. In fact, it did reach some
areas of Alaska; that is America.
We have gone through the weapons of mass destruction proliferation, and
we didn't have a strong response to that. The strongest response we had back
during the problem with Somalia and Mogadishu--you might remember that
tragedy--we bailed out, ``cut and run,'' which is a favorite thing for
liberals to do when crises appear.
The sixth huge problem that the President inherited was an intelligence
breakdown. It had been broken for a long time. I could not blame Democrats
for that. When I was elected in 1994 from the House to the Senate, I
replaced David Boren. Senator Boren had been chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee for quite some time. After I was elected in that
special election, he said we need to sit down and talk about our
intelligence system. So we did. He talked about turf battles, that we have
the CIA, FBI, NSA, and DIA, and none of them were cooperating or
coordinating with one another. I said I will get on the Intelligence
Committee, which I did, only to find out what David Boren told me was
exactly the situation. We tried to correct it, and we were not successful,
the same as he was not successful prior to 1994.
I remember once going down to the NSA in Virginia and they were showing
me, at that time, a new listening device that could listen to somebody
through 2 feet of concrete. I said: That is great; it is what they need in
New York City right now. The FBI has a need for this type of technology.
They said: This is ours, they cannot have it. That is the type of situation
we had. It was something that had been that way for a long period of time.
Nonetheless, the President did inherit that.
The last thing that falls into the class of the huge inherited problems
by this President is the problem of China, and I was critical about this on
the Senate floor. I stood here at this podium and said at the time that the
first thing Clinton-Gore did when they assumed office was go to our energy
labs and start tearing down the security system. They did away with
color-coded badges. We remember that. Everybody knew that. Do you know why?
They said: This is demeaning for someone who has a color that designates a
lower form of security. We want everybody to be the same. Then they did away
with background checks and with the FBI wiretapping, and as a result of
that--remember Wen Ho Lee who ended up taking to China everything we had
from our energy labs? We lost at that time to China our W-88 warhead
capability. This was a crown jewel; this was the device that would allow us
to have nuclear capability where we could attach 10 nuclear missiles to a
single warhead. We lost that and the Chinese got that.
Remember what happened with the Loral Corporation? At that time, we had a
system the Loral Corporation had that was a guidance technology that we were
using in this country. However, they were precluded from sending it to other
countries because this was something we didn't want anybody else to have. In
order to send this to China, the President, Bill Clinton, had to sign a
waiver, and he signed a waiver so Loral could sell guidance technology to
the Chinese so they would be more accurate in their efforts to use their
missiles. I am sure it was not related at all to the fact that Bernard
Schwartz, the head of Loral Corporation, was their largest single financial
contributor. Now they are talking about how terrible this thing is with this
guy that was contributing to both Democrats and Republicans and, yet, that
wasn't half as bad as what happened during the time that President Clinton
signed a waiver so the Chinese would have our guidance technology.
Tomorrow night is going to be the State of the Union Message. I sat in
the House Chamber and watched the second or third one that President Clinton
had. He made the statement--and it was documented that at the time he made
the statement the Chinese had between 13 and 18 of our cities targeted, and
he stood up and said: Not one missile is pointed at one American child
tonight, not one. Everybody applauded, but at that time between 13 and 18 of
our cities were targeted by the Chinese.
So we have had a problem that is a very serious one and one that the
President had to deal with. Of course, we knew the Chinese were transferring
the prohibited weapons technology to Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and North
Korea and other countries. That is the ninth thing the President inherited.
That is the real serious problem. Yet if we look at this chart again, the
President had the lowest, in terms of percentage of gross national product,
since before World War II.
This President came in, and the first thing the Bush administration tried
to do is rebuild this broken military system. This is what President Bush
did. I was so proud of him for doing it. You saw the other one, where you
take the static line up there and it looked like a bathtub, where Clinton
was $400 billion below, down here, just a static increase that would go with
the inflationary rate. This is what the Bush administration did. If you take
that black line, instead of being below that, they proposed, and the Senate
and House agreed, to increase it during that period of time. That is up now,
and that is 5 years. So it is $334 billion more than the static
inflation-rate increase--not $400 billion less, as it was in the Clinton
administration. Now, if you take, in addition to that, the emergency
supplementals that went to military, that is another $292 billion. Add that
together, and it is $626 billion more. That is a lot of money.
It is hard for me, as a conservative, to stand here and brag about the
fact that we are spending more on the military, but we had to in order to
strengthen our programs and build up our troop strength and our
modernization program. Bush went in and he did a lot of other things, too.
He helped the troops by increasing salaries and their housing allowances.
Prior to this time, they were having to spend 15 percent of their housing
out of their own pockets. He took care of that for them. He increased their
capabilities and readiness, the growth in the language training and funding
of intelligence, and we have seen an increase in lethality across all forces
by focusing much more on precision instruments.
If I could, I will go through our different services and make some
comments as to what this President did when he inherited this broken defense
system.
In the Army, he moved it from the old system of dealing with divisions
and organized them into modular brigades, combat teams that are much more
capable and much faster to be deployed. These are ongoing plans to increase
our force size from 33 brigades to 42 brigades to build back up what came
down in the nineties.
Because of this reorganization, about 75 percent of the Army's brigade
structure should always be ready, and with the increase for the Special Ops,
for the Psych Ops, for the military police, and for the logistic units, he
has done a remarkable job.
The rotation of units is kind of interesting, and I will get to that in a
minute.
In looking at the Navy, the biggest problem he inherited there was spare
parts. None of our ships would float. He concentrated on spare parts, and he
now has the ships so they are out and ready and are actually out in areas
that could be combat areas.
One of the changes he made was, instead of bringing it all the way back
to the United States and changing the crews, he leaves the ship in the
battle area and flies the crew back and puts a new crew in. As a result, the
percentage of ships routinely at sea has increased by more than 50 percent.
In the Air Force, the modernization program--we are back with the Joint
Strike Fighter working for that, and we actually have our FA-22. It is
flying. We have increased that fleet. We are actually going to be ahead of
the other countries.
Keep in mind--I talked about China a minute ago--back during the time the
Russians were selling the SU-27s which are better than our F-15s and F-16s,
in one purchase, the Chinese purchased 240 of those. We have a long way to
get back.
One of the things the President did in the Air Force was recognize our
ALCs, air logistic centers, and start funding them again so we can maintain
and rebuild our aging aircraft fleet. We now have three ALCs. They are
located in Utah, Georgia, and Oklahoma.
It is amazing what they have done. The rate of aircraft grounded due to
parts issues decreased by 37 percent, it has bettered our flying goal of
922,000 hours, the rate of aircraft incidents due to parts issues has
decreased by 23 percent, and logistics response time has increased by 20
percent. Good things are happening, and we see tangible results.
On force posturing, this is something the President did, and I am very
proud I had something to do with this. It occurred to me as a member of the
Senate Armed Services Committee that we have all these families deployed in
Western Europe and South Korea, and yet, as chairman of the Environment and
Public Works Committee, I know what some of the far-left environmentalists
are doing to our ability to have live ranges.
In Europe, that same thing was happening. So our families with our
soldiers training over there could only train on live ranges, sometimes 5
days a week, sometimes 3 days a week, only during daylight hours, and the
restrictions were so cumbersome that we were not able to train these guys.
It just made sense, if we tried something totally different and changed
our force structure, instead of having them in Western Europe where they
cannot train, put them in Eastern Europe. I went to Bulgaria and Romania and
a number of places where they have training ranges that they will allow us
to use free of charge. They will even billet us while we are there.
In changing our structure, we will bring all the families back. Instead
of having 2-, 3-, 4-year deployments with the families going over to Western
Europe, we will have 2- and 3-month deployments and not send the families,
just the troops over to the eastern areas, and they can get as much training
in 3 months as they could before this in 3 years. That is one of the major
changes. Right now, we are in the process of bringing back 70,000 troops,
and 100,000 family members are coming back. It is a major improvement.
That is how Bush responded to the national security threats. He did it
swiftly and decisively. After taking office, he was faced with a couple of
crises. The first one was not quite as severe, but it was serious. That was
back when the Chinese shot down one of our EP-3 Navy surveillance planes,
and he was able to, because of the decisive action he took, bring the plane
back and the crew and no one was hurt.
Then along came the tragedy of all tragedies, 9/11. I thought: Boy, am I
glad we have somebody in there who is decisive and can respond. The World
Trade Center and the Pentagon got hit. If it had not been for the courageous
bunch of people over Pennsylvania, very likely this building, where I am
speaking right now, would have been one of the targets and one of the
victims. That is what we are dealing with and the changes that were made.
The third part is policy change. I am going to run through this quickly,
but I would like to have people think about this. The President changed the
policy, and I think we can pretty much take his rhetoric that he has lived
up to and see how different this is from the decade of the nineties.
The President said: You are either with us or against us. That is what
the President said to other countries. If you are not with us, you are an
enemy. He said that Americans are asking how will we fight to win this war:
We will direct every resource at our command, every means of diplomacy,
every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every
necessary weapon of war to the disruption and defeat of the global war on
terror network.
The President went further to say we are going to do four things. He said
we are determined to prevent the attacks of terrorist networks before they
occur.
Second, we are determined to deny weapons of mass destruction to outlaw
regimes and to their terrorist allies who will use them.
Third, we are determined to deny radical groups the support and sanctuary
of outlaw regimes.
Fourth, we are determined to deny militants control of any nation.
Within weeks of 9/11, he sent the military to Afghanistan to remove the
Taliban. Operation Enduring Freedom was successful.
He asked Congress for the PATRIOT Act.
He established the Department of Homeland Security.
He formed the 9/11 Commission. The 9/11 Commission had 39
recommendations, of which we adopted 37.
He launched a preemptive attack against Saddam Hussein, and that worked
successively. That was Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He established the National Counterterrorism Center, which is now up and
running.
He established a Domestic Nuclear Detection Office where just one single
Federal agency is in charge so these things don't get lost in a barrage of
bureaucracies.
He established the Terrorist Screening Center.
He established and transformed the FBI to focus on preventing terrorism.
He strengthened the Transportation Safety Administration.
He improved border screening and security through the US-VISIT entry-exit
system.
For the first time, he started looking at our problems with regard to
cargo coming into this country. He set up the National Targeting Center,
which is responsible for that.
He expanded shipping security through the Container Security Initiative,
which worked successfully.
He developed Project Bioshield. This is an organized defense against
chemical weapons and biological weapons, as well as nuclear attacks.
He aggressively cracked down on terrorist financing with many
international partners. Over 400 individuals and entities have been
designated pursuant to the Executive order, resulting in nearly $150 million
in frozen assets and millions more blocked so they cannot get to the
terrorist activities.
The international successes he has had are incredible. We are safer
today.
Mr. President, 9/11 was a wake-up call. We are doing the right things.
Another measure of success is Iraq. You would never know it, listening to
the media. The first thing the troops ask me when I go over there is, Why
doesn't the media like us? Why don't they understand what we are doing? I
think now they are catching on that the American people are aware of our
success.
They have had three successful nationwide elections. They voted for a
transitional government and drafted the most progressive democratic
constitution in the Arab world, approved a new constitution, elected a new
government under a new constitution, with each election less violent, with a
bigger turnout than the one before.
The Sunnis, the ones who were not cooperating, are now cooperating. There
was an article about a week ago in the Los Angeles Times that talked about
the killing by a suicide bomber of literally hundreds of Iraqi troops, and
most were Sunnis, and 225 Sunni families each offered another member of
their family to replace those who had been killed. That is Iraq.
Still, there are international successes with terrorism. The terrorists
who attacked on 9/11 are in jail, dead, or on the run. They are isolated.
Al-Qaida and bin Laden no longer have a safe haven in which to hide. The
Taliban is deposed, and democracy is in its place.
The al-Qaida structure has been taken out. No major attacks on the United
States have taken place since all this took place. We have had the
disruption of at least 10 serious al-Qaida terrorist plots since 9/11. Three
of those plots, incidentally, were plots to do something to the United
States of America within the confines of our borders.
We had the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction that was taking
place during the nineties and the AQ Khan network in Pakistan. They are no
longer distributing weapons of mass destruction or information about them.
There are now six-party talks ongoing with North Korea, and the United
States is no longer alone in pressuring the North Koreans to give up their
nuclear programs.
Libya opened its doors to inspection. This is really critical because
Libya, during the Clinton administration of the nineties, was building
weapons of mass destruction, their unconventional weapons program. I can't
help but think they equate President Bush with President Reagan because we
remember and they remember, certainly, what happened in 1986 when President
Reagan sent about F-111s into Libya and pounded them into the ground. All of
a sudden, Libya opened their doors to our inspectors, and they have admitted
the country had sought to develop unconventional weapons, but now they are
eliminating them.
In missile defense, this is significant because since 1983 when the SDI
program started and people were deriding it--the liberals didn't want us to
be able to defend ourselves against incoming missile attacks. We now have
the beginning of one coming in place. We can now knock down incoming
missiles into the United States. That is huge. Not many people are aware of
it, but that is what is happening.
We talked about the problems he inherited and about the solutions. How
much further do we have to go? In the State of the Union Message tomorrow
night, we are going to hear the President talk about Iraq and about some of
the things we need to continue in Iraq, the successes we have had, but also
the international community, the fact they are going to have to come up with
what they agreed to. They agreed to supply $13 billion toward the war in
Iraq. They have not done it yet. I think he is going to invite them to do it
tomorrow night.
The Iran problem, with the President of Iran declaring Israel must be
wiped off the map and the Holocaust was actually a myth--a far more serious
issue is Iran's attempt to restart their nuclear program. Against the
International Atomic Energy Agency directive, on January 10, Iran reopened
Natanz nuclear complex. That is a serious problem.
Mexico and the borders--we have talked about that and recognize it is a
serious problem.
The NSA eavesdropping--I think the President will talk about that.
Everyone is concerned about people's feelings being hurt and not about the
intervention of the President to eavesdrop and try to get information from
known terrorist groups coming into this country and trying to communicate
with terrorists within the country. I am really proud of this President for
sticking to his guns on this issue. We need to keep that going. I am sure he
will mention something about that tomorrow night.
China--I am sure he will talk about the problems with China. I have to
say this: As a member of the Armed Services Committee, during the nineties,
during the Clinton administration, I watched the dismantling of our system.
At the time, we were going down to about 60 percent of what we had at the
end of the Persian Gulf war, and at that time, China had increased its
military procurement by 1,000 percent. That is bad enough, and that is
serious, but the other thing they are doing, their problem with us is we are
the No. 1 and No. 2 country in terms of having to depend on other countries
to have the energy to run our country and certainly to fight a war.
When we do this, I see China out there all of a sudden has its $70
billion deal with Iran, and now they are importing 13 percent of their oil
from Iran. They are refusing to go along with us on sanctions against the
Sudan with all the atrocities going on there. Now they are importing 70
percent of their oil from Sudan. We know what they have been doing with
Chavez in Venezuela.
These are real serious problems we are facing with China. I am sure he
will talk about these tomorrow night.
He will talk about our overreliance on foreign oil. I cannot be critical
of the Democrats or Republicans. We are all responsible for that.
Back when Don Hodel was Secretary of Interior during the Reagan
administration, we had a little song and dance where we would go out to the
consumption States, such as New York and Illinois, and we would tell them
that our reliance on foreign countries for energy is really not an energy
issue, it is a national security issue because we are relying on them for
our ability to fight a war.
Do you know what our reliance was at that time? We were relying on
foreign countries for 35 percent of our total amount of oil imports, oil to
run our country. Now it is at 63 percent. That is serious.
I have to say in conclusion I believe the President deserves excellent
grades. What this administration accomplished in the last 5 years is
phenomenal. If we compare where we were and where we are now, we are a more
secure nation. We have finally awakened and we have started to deal
aggressively with the threats that are facing us. We are no longer treating
the terrorist enemies of the United States like disadvantaged people. We are
no longer turning a blind eye to the nuclear proliferation by negotiating
without the real threat of military action. Our negotiators can now go to
the table with more credibility.
We are no long underfunding the readiness challenge. If we had an
administration without the willingness to fund defense, take decisive action
and stand up to our allies with their heads buried in the sand, we would be
in far worse shape than we are today. I believe Europe is slowly awakening
to the threats that exist. Fortunately we have had one very strong ally who
stayed with us through this challenging period, Tony Blair. I am sure the
President will renew his praise for Tony Blair and all the help he has given
to us.
I wish to say one thing. Let me ask the Chair how much time I have
remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. TALENT). The Senator has approximately 14
minutes remaining.
Mr. INHOFE. Let me make a comment about this thing, ``The U.S. Military
Under Strain and at Risk.'' It is amazing that the media would give any
attention to this group. Do you know who this group is? This group is
Madeleine Albright, Burger--this is the group, Podesta--these are the ones
who gave us the problems we had in the 1990s and so they came with a report
and say the military is under strain, at risk.
We are undoing the damage they did. The far-left Democrat club that gave
us the broken force of the 1990s is the one in charge of this report. If you
watch TV, you would think they are actually people who are seriously
concerned about the United States of America and concerned about undoing the
damage that has been done there when they in fact were the ones who caused
damage. The Chief of Staff of the Army, General Schoomacker is a good guy.
He came out of retirement and agreed to do this. He didn't have to do it. He
is not one of the guys who had to do it for a job. He is retired. He is down
on a ranch. He agreed to come in and become the commander of the Army, and
he read this report and said there is no truth to it. Our Army is not
broken. We are actually going through modernization challenges, but it is
trying to modernize, modularize, and mobilize, and fight a global war at the
same time.
The accusations that were made, let's look at one of them in particular.
It says:
Nearly all of the available combat units in the U.S. Army National Guard
and Marine Corps have been used in the current operations.
That is true because we started with a force that was underfunded and had
been drawn down during the 1980s by the very people who came out with this
report. They didn't have the right kind of a mix. So we are changing that
and taking it away from the Cold War military to one that is facing this
asymmetric threat we have out there. We are currently raising the number of
our brigades from 33 to 42. Congress has given us now, through the
leadership of the President, authorization for 30,000 more troops.
The shortfall, that was their fault. Again, you can go in and read more
of this report saying the Army is experiencing the beginnings of what could
become a major recruiting crisis. Right now we are raising our number within
the Army from 484,000 to 512,000 and, while we are doing that, our
recruiting and our retention is very good. Right now the Active Force
retention and recruiting figures combined for 2005 were 99.1 percent. It may
not be growing as fast as we would like toward the 512,000, but we can
hardly call that a failure. In the first quarter of fiscal year 2006, we
achieved 104 percent of the recruiting mission and 100 percent of the
retention mission for the quarter.
The Guard and Reserve are all overworked, but in the first quarter,
recruiting figures for the National Guard are 106 percent and the Reserves
are doing even better at 122 percent. General Fuzzy Webster, who came back
with the Third Infantry Division--that was their second rotation--they now
have a 133-percent retention. That is the third ID that has been over there
fighting for freedom on two different occasions.
Anyway, the surprising thing is the press would give them any attention
at all.
Last, let me share my own personal experience. I have had occasion to go
to Iraq or the Iraq area 10 times now. I take very seriously my job as a
member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Let me share with you, not
all 10 times but a little anecdotal experience on 3 of those times.
First, in January, January is the first vote. I remember one lady--I had
an interpreter and we were interviewing--and she said I couldn't see the
ballot because of the tears in my eyes. Then it occurred to me, this is not
the first time in the 30 years of the butcher Saddam Hussein, this is the
first time in 7,000 years we have had an opportunity at self-determination.
A few days later I decide to spend my time in the Sunni triangle because
that is where they are supposed to hate us the most. There is a general in
Fallujah by the name of Mahdi, the brigade commander for Saddam Hussein, the
brigade commander for the Iraqi security forces in Fallujah. At that time he
hated Americans, until they started training with the Marines in Fallujah,
called embedded training. They became so fond of the Marines, when they
rotated the Marines out we all got together and we cried. He renamed
Fallujah Iraqi security force the Fallujah marines. That man is now in
charge of security in Baghdad because he is doing security for us. In
Tikrit, I was there when they blew up one of the training centers where 40
Iraqis were seriously injured. What you don't see in the media is the 40
families who had that loss replaced their loved ones with another member of
the family.
When you go across the Sunni triangle 50 or 100 feet off the ground in a
helicopter, little kids are waving American flags. When we send care
packages to our kids, cookies or candies, they don't eat them, they
repackage them and throw them to the kids there. That is the truth of what
was happening.
I was up there last month during the election.
Everybody expected the problems of the terrorists, the insurgents, to
spike at that time, but it didn't happen because they have run out of steam.
The IEDs, they went down by 30 percent in the month before the December
election. Suicide bombs went down by 70 percent in 90 days. The road from
the airport that goes into the green zone, I have been on it many times,
they were having about 10 terrorist activities each week and now there have
not been any for 7 months. Not one. That is when we turned over the security
to the Iraqis and they are taking care of their own security.
These are the successes that are taking place. The number of tips that
come in from Iraqis, they used to be 500 a month, now they are up to 5,000 a
month. This is what is happening.
When we see that this general is now in Baghdad, and more than the
eastern half of Baghdad, there is not one American boot on the ground, they
are all Iraqis. They are the ones taking care of their own security and the
112 battalions they have right now, approximately 220,000 troops, 32 of
those 112 battalions are either level 1 or level 2; that is, they can go
into battle on their own. In January a year ago none were in that position.
Is it going to be over? People are always asking that question. People
are not answering. I will answer that question. If you take the trend where
we are right now, right now we have trained and equipped 220,000 Iraqi
troops. By the end of this year it will be 300,000 Iraqi troops. The goal
was to get up to 325,000. Why? Because all the military people tell me we
need to get to 10 divisions before we can turn the security of Iraq over to
the Iraqis, and that will be 325,000. We will be there by June of 2007. By
June of 2007 we will have turned over the security to the Iraqis. We will
still have a few troops there--we still have troops in Bosnia and
Kosovo--but the security will have been turned over to them.
When you go through the towns and see the hospitals, the schools, the
businesses--$22 billion in oil reserves are going in. Yet you have several
Senators coming back, Senators who, I might add, are running for President
in 2008, trying to make you think things are not successful there. Senator
Biden came back and said they only had 30,000 troops. It was not 30,000, it
was 200,000 when he made that statement. Senator Kerry said our troops are
out at night terrorizing women. I talked to the troops. None of them even
know what he is talking about.
I have to conclude, and I say this in all sincerity to the authors of
this report and to the 1990s crowd that got us into this mess, and I say to
the naysayers, and I say to the cut-and-run caucus, I have named them--I say
to the hand wringers: I am sure glad you are not in charge because, if you
were, what happened to the military and national security in the 1990s would
be happening again right now. We would be right back to the same path where
surrender is always an option. Back where? Negotiating with terrorists.
There is nothing wrong with that. Negotiate and appease, negotiate and
appease. I thank God every day our President, George Bush, is not an
appeaser. An appeaser is a guy who throws his friends to the alligators
hoping they will eat them last.
Hiram Mann said:
No man survives when freedom fails.
The best men rot in filthy jails.
And those who cry appease, appease,
are hanged by those they tried to please.
Back in 2000 we came within six electoral votes of being hanged by those
we tried to please.
Looking at what this President has done, grading the President on
national defense and national security, very clearly President Bush--I am
anxious to hear him tomorrow night--very clearly he will get an A.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r109:7:./temp/~r109XdB2g6:e0:
BC
> NATIONAL SECURITY -- (Senate - January 30, 2006)
> Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I am not here, people will be glad to know, to
> talk about Judge Alito. I am here as an assignment. Serving on the Senate
> Armed Services Committee, as is the keeper of the chair, I have been there
> for quite a number of years. I have taken the assignment of giving a grade
> as to what President Bush, prior to his State of the Union Message tomorrow
> night, has done in the way of national security and national defense. I am
> proud to say that I am very proud of the job he has done. In doing this,
> what I would like to do is break it down into three segments.
>....
> rest of deranged nonsense clipped
"Mr. INHOFE" is Senator James M. 'Jim' Inhofe, the right-
wing, anti-science, homophobic, lying-ass Republican
religious cretin from Oklahoma. You would have been
better off posting another of Stephen Hayes's fantasies
than anything from this clown. Inhofe is actually a poster
boy for one of the problems with having Republicans
running things: he's involved in two committees he has
absolutely no background qualifications for: he's on the
Armed Services Committee and his military experience
is just two years in the Army back in the 50's with all
his subsequent work experience being in life insurance
and land development; he's also the Chairman of the
Senate Environment & Public Works Committee despite
being a raging anti-environmentalist. Look at this quote
by him from just about a year ago:
"As I said on the Senate floor on July 28, 2003, 'much
of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear,
rather than science.' I called the threat of catastrophic
global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on
the American people,' a statement that, to put it mildly,
was not viewed kindly by environmental extremists and
their elitist organizations."
http://inhofe.senate.gov/pressreleases/climateupdate.htm
Some other tidbits about him:
- He was elected in 1994 after running on a platform he
described as "God, gays, and guns."
- In 1997, he blocked the nomination of James Hormel, the
first openly-gay ambassadorial nominee.
- In 1972, as an Oklahoma state senator, he recommended
that Jane Fonda and George McGovern be hanged for treason.
- He sponsored the Religious Freedom Amendment, which
would have required accommodation of religion on all public
property, specifically in schools. When queried about how
he'd feel when schools would have to let Muslim students
pray to Allah five times per day, or to provide vegetarian
meals for Buddhists, or to allow Wiccans or Druids to
conduct their ceremonies on school property and proselytize
other students, Inhofe said that, basically, anything other
than Judaism or Christianity isn't a "real" religion and wouldn't
be constitutionally protected.
He's obviously a clueless retard, so it's safe to say that anything
he says without providing any specific supporting evidence
can be safely trash-canned without concern for missing
anything important.
And this has to do with WMD's how? If you look through that
tortuously long drivel of his, this is what he has to offer:
"There is something kind of interesting happening right
now that I don't think even the Presiding Officer is aware of,
and that is there is an individual I met in my office in
Oklahoma, a former general in the Iraqi Army. He was an air
general of the Air Force in Iraq, Georges Sada. There is
a book he has written, which is out today, called 'Sadam's
Secrets.' He witnessed what they did with the weapons of
mass destruction. They took them and put them into various
aircraft and took them across the Syrian border. It is all in
this book. He was on 'Hannity and Colmes' about 4 days
ago. Watch for this guy, Georges Sada. He will let you
know that there were weapons of mass destruction. We
knew that anyway because he used them on some 200,000
people that he was able to painfully kill using chemical
weapons."
WTF!?! Here's a Senator on the Armed Services Committee
and the best evidence he has for those missing WMD's is
a friggin book author he saw on Hannity & Colmes "4 days
ago"?!?!
And look at this form him as well:.
"But I say that not because we have now solved the mystery
of the weapons of mass destruction because that never was
important. What was important was the things we knew
when we went into Iraq.
"Let me tell you the most significant thing and the greatest
victory that we could not talk about at that time, which was
the three major terrorist training camps that were located in
Iraq--Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak. We broke those
as soon as we brought down Saddam Hussein."
That bit about "the major terrorist training camps that were
located in Iraq--Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak." comes
directly from Stephen Hayes's "Saddam's terror training
camps" fantasy yarn that appeared a few weeks ago in the
Weekly Standard, and which, if you recall, I trashed rather
easily because it left off any mention of the Palestinians,
which so happend were the primary if not exclusive users
of those training camps. Al Qaeda got a few mentions
however, surprise-surprise, even though there wasn't a
scrap of real evidence presented showing their connection
to the camps So you have a full-of-sh*t right-wing Republican
Senator pretending to be a military expert quoting from a
full-of-sh*t neo-con writer pretending to be a journalist.
And that is the true state of the union these days.
-BC