Real Security Special Order

REAL SECURITY SPECIAL ORDER -- (House of Representatives - September 19, 2006)

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank my friend and colleague Mr. Schiff from California, thank him for organizing these very important national security discussions here on the floor in the House. I also want to thank my colleague from Maryland Steny Hoyer for his terrific leadership on national security and a whole range of issues, and it is great to be here again with David Scott, my colleague, from Georgia, who has also been a leader and a very important voice on these important issues to our country.

Mr. Hoyer mentioned that we had the important passing about 8 days ago of the solemn occasion of 9/11. It was the 5th-year anniversary of 9/11 and the terrible attacks that took place upon our country. And I do think it is important to go back to that time and remember where those attacks came from because they were launched from Afghanistan. You had a failed state in Afghanistan run by the Taliban; and in that failed state, al Qaeda was able to take hold and find a home, and Osama bin Laden was able to prosper and plot his attacks against the United States.

And after the attacks took place on September 11, 2001, this Congress, this country, and the international community were united in pledging that we would work together to defeat terrorism, to defeat al Qaeda and bring them to justice. And despite that unity, we have not achieved the result. In fact, if you look upon the situation today, there is great division in the world and we have failed to capitalize on that unity to finish the job in Afghanistan and against al Qaeda.

The President declared way back in 2003, May 2003, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, he had a big banner behind him that said ``Mission Accomplished.'' Well, we haven't come close to accomplishing that mission because as we gather here on the floor today, Osama bin Laden is alive and well somewhere along the Afghan/Pakistan border, al Qaeda continues to plot attacks against the United States. They have become a franchiser. You know how al Qaeda franchises around the world.

We have not made progress at totally dismantling that organization. In fact, what we are seeing in southern Afghanistan is a resurgence of the Taliban as reported by the NATO Commander there, and our own commanders on the ground.

What have we done? We have actually reduced the number of U.S. forces in southern Afghanistan. We disbanded the one unit at the CIA that had the specific mission of going after al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

You open the newspaper today and see that the opium crop in Afghanistan is at an all-time high, historic high. And we also know that the Pakistan Government that we had been really relying on to keep the Taliban and al Qaeda on the run in the northwest frontier part of Pakistan, that, in fact, they have now, the Pakistani Government has entered into a nonaggression pact essentially with the Taliban leaders and the leaders in the Waziristan area.

So here we are more than 5 years after those terrible attacks, and we have not completed the job. We have not finished the mission against al Qaeda. And instead, in my view, we have actually reduced our commitment to doing that. And we must make sure that as Americans we are again united today, making sure we finish the mission in Afghanistan and bringing to justice and defeating the organization that, after all, was the organization and the leadership responsible for those attacks of September 11.

Instead, we did take our eye off the ball. We decided, instead of finishing the job in Afghanistan, to go into Iraq. And today, unfortunately, if you look at the situation on the ground, it is a mess.

You know, the Vice President, it was a little more a year ago, he went on national television and said, and I quote, that ``the insurgency in Iraq was in its last throes.''

Well, just a few weeks ago we had a Pentagon report required by Congress that said that the insurgency, and I quote, ``remains potent and viable.'' And, in fact, the insurgency no longer is our number one problem in Iraq. The real problem is the cycling civil war, whether it is called a civil war, an incipient civil war, incipient of people are being killed in sectarian violence.

So you have a situation where the administration was wrong on so many counts. They were wrong on weapons of mass destruction, they were wrong on the claim that there was a connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. In fact, we now have a bipartisan report out of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that said definitively there was never any relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. In fact, they were adversaries, they were ideological opposites. They were wrong on that.

They were wrong on the cost of the war. They totally underestimated the cost of the war. They gave the American people one number that was low-balled. In turn it was a much bigger number.

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Van Hollen, notwithstanding all of those mistakes in judgment and execution of the war, I am sure it gave you great confidence to hear from the Vice President on Meet the Press that if he had to do it all over again, he would do exactly the same thing. That must have encouraged you.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. It was stunning actually, because what you would hope for from our national leaders is some reflection, some understanding that the situation that we encountered in Iraq was not what we expected, that it was not what he said it would be. And, in fact, unfortunately this administration has never come to grips with the huge gap between what they said would happen in Iraq and with what is happening on the ground. That has exposed, I believe, a great credibility gap.

So when the administration says, trust us, we know what we are doing in Iraq; all you people who raise questions, don't you worry about it, I have to say, that is what they told us many, many years ago. That is what Vice President Cheney said more than a year ago when he said the insurgency was in its last throes. So asking questions and trying to figure out a better way is, in fact, the patriotic thing to do.

But I think one of the things that is most surprising is the fact that the administration did not really have a postwar plan. They thought things were going to just go so swimmingly in Iraq, that you did not have to plan for really the postinvasion period.

In fact, just about a week ago, there was a general from the Defense Department who not only said that they did not have a postwar plan, but said specifically that Secretary Rumsfeld would punish anybody who came up with a plan, because it would send a signal to the outside world that this would not be as quick and easy as the Secretary of Defense wanted people to think it was.

And let me just, I think it is important to read this excerpt: ``Rumsfeld Forbade Planning for Postwar Iraq, General Says.'' This is out of the Saturday, September 9, Washington Post. ``Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a postwar Iraq, the retiring Commander of the Army Transportation Corps said.''

Brigadier General Mark Scheid said in an interview, that Rumsfeld said ``he would fire the next person'' who talked about the need for a postwar plan. And we wonder why we are in trouble today in Iraq. We wonder when we open our newspapers or look at television sets why we see such a mess.

You know, the terrible thing is that there were people in the administration who had worked on a postwar plan. Many people at the State Department had developed different scenarios for what would happen and how to respond. But instead of following that plan, the Defense Department essentially junked it, and Secretary Rumsfeld not only did not come up with a plan, but now we have a brigadier general who said that he threatened to fire people who came up with a plan.

We need to do some more firing. We need to hold people accountable. We need to hold people accountable who made these big, big mistakes.

Now, one of the other things that we have learned recently, and this may be partly due to the fact that they did not have a postwar plan, was the incompetence of many of the civilians that they sent in there to work on the reconstruction phase in Iraq. You know, we recently passed the 1-year anniversary of the terrible Hurricanes Katrina and Rita that struck our States in the Southern United States, struck New Orleans, struck Louisiana, struck Mississippi.

And we know all too well that the people in those regions were hit twice really. First they were hit by a terrible hurricane, and then they were hit by the incompetence of a FEMA that was headed up by people who were not experts in emergency response, but happened to be political favorites in the administration. Michael Brown, we know that his primary credential was he had been the President of the Horse Breeders Association.

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Van Hollen, I am sure if there had been an emergency of a national character involving thoroughbred horses, we would have been prepared.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Well, the FEMA job, as we know, is one that we have to be prepared for all sorts of things, but you are absolutely right, my colleague. It goes to show, in my view, the kind of disdain that the administration has with respect to what kind of qualifications are required for people who are vested with such important national responsibilities.

And we remember when the President said, ``Heck of a job, Brownie,'' in the midst of the real disaster not just from the hurricane, but in the response.

But what I think we are learning now, unfortunately, is that same kind of cronyism, that same kind of cronyism infected many of the decisions with respect to who we sent to Iraq for that postwar period and reconstruction period.

You would think that in deciding who we should send to Iraq, we would send the people who are highly qualified at reconstruction, people who knew something about Iraq, maybe people who spoke Arabic and the native language if we had them available. But if you look at a very recent article from the Washington Post, we learned that it was not those kind of expert qualifications that made the decision. It had to do with whether or not you were a big political supporter of the Bush administration.

And I think this kind of political cronyism, when it comes to the biggest national security issues we have got, shows an incredible contempt for the American people and their security.

I just think it is very important to read a little passage from this article from the Washington Post. This is an article, September, this past Sunday, September 17. Headline: Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq. After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2007, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans, restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists, and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to just get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, who is a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants did not need to be experts in the Middle East or in postconflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

Jumping down a bit: The decision to send the loyal and willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors.

And one of the people who was set up to be, he was the CPA person over there, said: We did not tap, and it should have started from the White House on down, we just did not tap the right people to do this job, said Frederick Smith, who served as the Deputy Director of the CPA, that is the Coalition Provisional Authority's Washington office. It was a tough, tough job. Instead, we got people who went out there because of their political leanings.

He goes on to give a couple of examples of how people with absolutely no experience in contracts were given responsibilities for a $18 billion construction budget.

He goes on to talk about, you know, 24-year-old political appointees whose only qualifications were they had been part of the Bush campaign machine. Those are the people that were sent to Iraq to do a very important mission for the American people.

And it is extremely disturbing to discover that the qualifications for those people had nothing to do with their ability to do the job, their expertise to do the job, their past background to do the job; that what it had to do with was whether they were a big political booster of the Bush administration. It points out that many of them were big political contributors to the Bush administration.

Taking that kind of license with our national security, I think, is scandalous. It is important that we begin to hold people to account. Let's begin to have a real national conversation, not just a one-way discussion that the President wants to have.

Let's have some real hearings on Capitol Hill. Let's begin to have some accountability, because we all know that when you have a system that rewards people who fail, that gives a pat on the back to the people who constantly got it wrong, and yet at the same time penalizes the people who got it right in this administration, the people who said we needed more troops on the ground, the people who questioned some of the decisions, it turns out that people who questioned the decisions were ignored or penalized. People like this general who wanted to do some postwar planning was ignored. In fact, they threatened to fire people who did that kind of thing.

If you reward failure, you are going to get more failure. What we are asking I think tonight and on other nights is that we just begin to hold people accountable and that this House of Representatives begin to do its job, and not be a rubber stamp, not just say yes, Mr. President, you know it all, when in fact we know from what is going on in Iraq that they have gotten so much wrong. Let's begin to get it right, and let's begin to ask the hard questions. I thank my colleague.

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