Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2007

FOREIGN OPERATIONS, EXPORT FINANCING, AND RELATED PROGRAMS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007 -- (House of Representatives - June 08, 2006)

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Mr. LYNCH. First of all, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Mr. Kolbe for his great work on this bill, and also Ranking Member Lowey. I will not take the 5 minutes that I am allowed under the amendment process, but I do want to take a few minutes just to talk about what is going on here.

Mr. Chairman, the amendment that I have offered proposes to confront the related threats posed by improvised explosive devices, also known as IEDs, as well as land mines, which are being used against our men and women in uniform and against innocent civilians in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

My amendment seeks to accomplish this by dedicating $5 million for the State Department account for nonproliferation, anti-terrorism, demining, and related programs. This $5 million will be offset by shifting the same amount from the Export-Import Bank's administrative expense account, which is currently funded at $72 million.

Mr. Chairman, like a lot of Members on both sides of the aisle, I have recently returned from my fifth visit to our troops in Iraq and I have also spent some time in Afghanistan. On all of my visits to the region, I have been accompanied by strong representation from both parties, and one issue that has emerged and has grown more lethal is the threat to our men and women in the military, to nongovernmental agencies, to coalition contractors, to the press, and to innocent Afghani and Iraqi citizens is the threat posed by these so-called improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

While some IEDs are triggered remotely with basic electronics, such as portable phone stations or garage door openers, in many other cases, we are finding that these IEDs are being triggered by a simple contact strip concealed within a narrow section of split holes that is concealed in cracks in the roadway or have been covered by a thin layer of dirt just below the surface of local roads. They can be detonated by pressure of a passing vehicle or with as little pressure as a child's footstep. These latter types of devices are much more similar in their nature and use to land mines.

Moreover, as time goes on and as the casualties grow, we are finding that many of the land mines previously planted by Saddam Hussein and the Taliban in Afghanistan have been recovered by the insurgents and are now being retrofitted to serve as components in these more lethal IEDs.

Like most of my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, I have made more than a few visits to Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital. We have all seen the devastation and the damage and suffering that these IEDs have brought to the very best Americans and their families. In my last visit with General Casey in Baghdad, he estimated that approximately 50 percent of our monthly casualties in Iraq are the result of these IEDs. So the importance of what we are doing here, reducing these threats, should be obvious to everyone.

In closing, with today's news that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been eliminated and the last of the new Iraqi ministers has been selected, it is my greatest hope that we have now reached a point at which we can begin to transfer governing authority and responsibility to the new Iraqi government and to bring our troops home. But regardless of the rate of progress, these armaments will still remain a lethal threat to our troops and to innocent civilians. By transferring this money, this $5 million, we can expedite the process of recovering and disposing of these lethal land mines and potential IEDs before additional life and limb is lost.

I do appreciate the courtesy that Chairman Kolbe and Ranking Member Lowey have afforded me, and I am thankful that they have accepted this amendment.

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