Minimizing Damage from Storms

MINIMIZING DAMAGE FROM STORMS

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, let me thank the Senator from Louisiana. She has been through an ordeal, as well as her colleague, Senator Vitter, with the Katrina damage and what followed. She has been on this floor every day and in private meetings every single day, exhorting this Senate, both Democrats and Republicans, not to forget what happened to her home State. It is a tragedy that none of us would like to see befall our own States, and we owe it to her to work with the President, on a bipartisan basis, first, to help the evacuees and victims; second, to make sure the great city of New Orleans is back and running as quickly as possible; third, to make the changes that are necessary to give them peace of mind and security for generations to come.

I have listened to her time and again come to the floor and talk about health care and education, the basics that people need to survive. I worry, as I am sure she does, that we are going through Katrina fatigue, that we have heard it for so long we want to turn the page and talk about other things. Thank you for reminding us every single day we cannot turn that page. I have met with those victims. Some have come to Illinois. I tell you but for the generosity and compassion of churches, charities, and local community groups, I do not know how some of these families would have survived.

What has happened in farflung communities in Illinois is that these evacuees have been embraced--and thank goodness that happened because otherwise they tell me they wouldn't have known where to turn. When the Government should have been there, it was not there. Sadly, we have to step back now and take an honest evaluation of why that happened.

I know the Senator from Louisiana shares my belief that if we had an independent, nonpartisan commission--which we have been begging for for weeks now--to take a look at what happened, not so much that we can figure out who to blame but so that we make sure we never do it again. We hear complaints about FEMA--a few weeks ago in Florida and complaints in Texas. We can do better. When it comes to disasters facing America, natural and otherwise, we can do better. I think we need to come together in an independent, nonpartisan way to make that happen.

AHMED CHALABI

It is almost hard to believe, and impossible to explain, what is going on in Washington today as we honor and fete Ahmed Chalabi. Who is Ahmed Chalabi? He enjoys the rank of Deputy Prime Minister in the nation of Iraq. But he enjoys a very questionable reputation otherwise.

Ahmed Chalabi, it turns out, was one of the key advisers to the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq. He was so important to the Bush administration that they paid his organization, through the Defense Intelligence Agency, $335,000 a month to sustain his life and his office. Overall, the Bush White House gave his Iraqi National Congress $39 million over the last 5 years, $39 million to this Ahmed Chalabi. Ahmed Chalabi is an expatriate from Iraq, now returned with Saddam Hussein being removed from power, and he has been bankrolled by our Government as long as President Bush has been in office. His Iraqi National Congress was a major source of misinformation and disinformation about the situation in Iraq before our invasion. He was the one who was producing the evidence that led the administration to tell the American people there were weapons of mass destruction.

There were people who were skeptical of Ahmed Chalabi from the start. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said, on June 12, 2003, ``I can't substantiate Chalabi's claims. He makes new ones every year.''

This skepticism was shared by other agencies of our Government, but it did not stop the leaders of our Government, under President Bush, from bringing Ahmed Chalabi into the highest level meetings concerning America's national security and our policies in Iraq.

On September 18, 2001, Richard Perle convened a 2-day meeting of the Defense Policy Board, a group that advises the Pentagon. Chalabi, who was a guest speaker at this meeting, made a presentation on the threat from Iraq.

It turns out that Chalabi was producing information from so-called defectors on a regular basis to the highest levels of the Bush administration--most of which turned out to be false.

Chalabi's defector reports were ..... flowing from the Pentagon directly to the Vice-President's office [Mr. Cheney] and then on to the President, with little prior evaluation by intelligence professionals.

That statement was made by State Department intelligence expert Greg Thielmann in the New Yorker. He went on to say:

There was considerable skepticism throughout the intelligence community about the reliability of Chalabi's sources, but the defector reports were coming all the time. Knock one down and another comes along. Meanwhile, the garbage was being shoved straight to the President.

Ahmed Chalabi was the source of this so-called intelligence garbage about the situation in Iraq.

And then there was the notorious source named ``Curve Ball.''

He should have been given that name because his information turned out to be so wrong, so bad, and so misleading. He was another one of the so-called defectors who provided this information. He was a discredited INC defector to Germany, code named ``Curve Ball,'' and the chief source of information on Iraq's supposed fleet of mobile germ weapons factories which turned out to be a hoax. ``Curve Ball'' was the brother of a top lieutenant to Ahmad Chalabi.

Chalabi did not stop with reaching the highest levels of our Government and misleading them about the situation in Iraq. He had his friends in the media. Chalabi was the source of discredited news stories about Iraq, penned by New York Times reporter Judith Miller. In 2001, Miller wrote a front-page story about claims that Saddam had 20 secret WMD sites hidden in Iraq. It is amazing, the exclusive story came ``just three days after the source had shown deception in a polygraph test administered by the CIA at the request of the Defense Intelligence Agency.''

So when they confronted Ahmad Chalabi and asked, how could you mislead the United States with all of this bad information, leading to our invasion of Iraq, 160,000 American soldiers risking their lives, over 2,000 killed, he said ``we are heroes in error.'' He boasted to the international media that even if he had misled the United States, he had achieved his goal. He got the United States to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein.

And then what happened? The tables turned on Mr. Ahmad Chalabi last year. In May of last year, the Iraqi officials, with the cooperation of the United States, raided Ahmad Chalabi's offices in Iraq. Why? I will tell you. In June 2004 Chalabi came under investigation for allegations that he passed secret intelligence data to Iran. Remember Iran, one of the axes of evil? Chalabi is accused of telling the Iranian Government that the United States had broken the code it used for secret communications. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice promised Congress a full investigation into these allegations.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

There is little sign of progress in a Federal investigation of allegations that Chalabi once leaked United States intelligence secrets to Iran.

If he did this, it is clear he endangered the lives of our troops, he endangered America's national security.

Just this week, the Wall Street Journal came out with a story about Ahmad Chalabi. They went to the FBI and said some 18 months later, what is the status of Ahmad Chalabi? Let me quote FBI spokesman John Miller, who strongly denied that the Chalabi investigation is languished. He said:

This is currently an open investigation and an active investigation.

He added:

Numerous current and former government employees have been interviewed.

Here we have a man who misled the leaders of our Government. Here we have a man who conceded and boasted that although he misled them, he achieved his purpose of getting the United States to invade Iraq. Here we have a man accused of selling secrets to the enemy, to Iran, and endangering American troops. And where do we find Ahmad Chalabi today? He is being hosted and feted by this administration. This man is in Washington with his motorcade moving around town, having appointments with Treasury Secretary Snow and the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. Today, he is going to share his wise view of the world with the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.

This is a hard story to explain. Hard to explain to the American people; harder still to explain to American troops. How can a man who has been accused and is under investigation for passing secrets from the United States to the Iranians and endangering the lives of our troops and national security now be the toast of the town in Washington, DC? How can a man under active investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a man who has not been called for any statement or any testimony, be this guest at the highest levels of our Government?

Congressman George Miller has been involved in this inquiry, as I have. He has made it clear, and I agree with him, when it comes to Ahmad Chalabi we shouldn't be serving him lunch, we ought to be serving him with a subpoena. We shouldn't treat him like a hero, we should treat him like a suspect in a case that may have endangered the lives of our troops.

I don't understand it. We need to call on the Intelligence Committee as well as the Department of Justice to use the tools they have to subpoena Ahmad Chalabi to make certain he answers the hard questions about how he misled our Government into invading Iraq and what he did to endanger the lives of our troops and our national security. Nothing less should be allowed when it comes to protecting our troops.

How much time remains?

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Isakson). There is 2 minutes 10 seconds.

OIL PROFITS

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I close by saying we also have coming to Capitol Hill today a group of oil company executives. They couldn't have come at a better time.

Someone said this is simply theater. I hope it isn't. It is time to ask hard questions of these oil companies which have over the past 6 months dramatically increased the price of energy for people across America. People living in Illinois and across our Nation--families, small businesses, farmers--have been dealing with this oppressive increase in prices.

A lot of blame was pointed, when it came to OPEC, that it is the Saudis; they are running up the price of oil. Well, they did, but that was not the reason the price at the gasoline pump went to $3. It went to $3 because of this: Oil companies are making record profits, record profits over the increased prices they are charging to consumers across America. This chart is an indication of the billions of dollars they are making.

ExxonMobil reported record quarterly profits of $9.9 billion, up 75 percent from last year. Put the nozzle in the tank and watch the numbers spin on the gas pump; the money from your credit card is going directly to the boardrooms of these oil company executives.

Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington has the right idea: We need to put the oil company executives under oath today, ask them the hard questions as to whether they have been profiteering at the expense of the most vulnerable people in America, people who get up and go to work every day and cannot afford to fill their gas tanks; businesses that are languishing, that cannot hire the people they need, cannot reach profitability, because of the profiteering of oil companies. And farmers, already hard pressed in many parts of our country by bad weather and bad prices, find their input costs going through the roof because of the high cost of energy.

The oil company and lobbyists are all over Capitol Hill. They are swarming because several Senators, including some Republicans, have called for a windfall profits tax. I support that. Take the money back from these oil companies, give it to consumers across America, fully fund LIHEAP, our program to provide heating sources for the poor in America. Make certain we tell these oil companies no, and stand up for the consumers who paid these outrageous prices.

I yield the floor.

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