Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2005

EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I salute the Senator from Kansas. I know he and the Senator from New Jersey have demonstrated extraordinary leadership on many issues that have come before this Senate, but certainly on the Darfur Accountability Act. I am an original cosponsor of that bipartisan measure and a strong supporter.

The latest estimates tell us more than 300,000 people have died in Darfur. The world has let this happen. In spite of all of our anguished promises after Rwanda that this would never happen again, it is happening again. Reports from aid workers back from Sudan state that attacks on the ground are still taking place. Villages are still being burned. Much of Darfur is still in a climate of terror. People are still afraid to go out for basics, to venture out for water, for wood, or the necessities of life.

Early this week, Human Rights Watch released a new report that Sudanese security forces, including police deployed to protect displaced persons, and allied jingaweit militias continue to commit rape and sexual violence on a daily basis. Refugee camps are no refuge. Women who fled Darfur to refugee camps in Chad have been imprisoned by Chadian authorities for trying to collect firewood outside their camps. Many of them were raped while in jail.

This has become a charnel house. This is an inferno. This is one of the rings of hell, and it is happening on our watch.

In some areas of Sudan, women who are raped by the jingaweit militia are now being threatened with prosecution. In short, Darfur still cries out for action. If these conditions do not constitute an emergency, I do not know what does.

Do we want to return to the Senate 6 months from now and lament the fact that another 300,000 victims have been added to the death tolls in this area? The amendment which will be offered later seeks a new U.N. Security Council resolution with sanctions, concerted United States diplomacy, an extension of the current arms embargo to cover the Government of Sudan, the freezing of assets and denial of visas to those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, accelerated assistance of the African Union Mission, and a military no-fly zone in Darfur.

One of the other components of this amendment is the appointment of a new special envoy to seek peace in Sudan to fill the role Ambassador Danforth played so well. As in many things, Pope John Paul II was ahead of this. He sent a special envoy last year so that voices of the people of Darfur might be heard.

The Bible tells us: Blessed be the peacemaker. We need to be peacemakers today. Let us hold the Government of Sudan accountable for its crimes and for these atrocities. Let us help the people of Darfur, and in doing so let us help to end this genocide.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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AMENDMENT NO. 427

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, those following the debate on the floor understand we are considering the supplemental appropriations bill that deals with the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the tsunami relief, and some other very important elements. I understand there are pending amendments and also an effort to reach an agreement about how future amendments will be offered. So even though I will not be offering an amendment at this time, I would like to say a few words about an amendment which I plan to offer as soon as an agreement is reached and to alert my colleagues and those following the debate what we are seeking to achieve.

This amendment, which I am proud to cosponsor with Senator Kennedy and Senator Levin, relates to troop training in Iraq. I thank the chairman and ranking member for their hard work on the bill. I believe it is imperative we continue to support our troops and address other emergencies in the world, including the devastating tsunami that swept across the Pacific right after Christmas.

We fully support our troops. We also want to see them come home. Training Iraqi troops to take the lead in Iraq is critical to our success in that country and to getting our service men and women back where they belong--with their families at home. Therefore, we are offering an amendment today to measure our progress toward that goal.

In this bill, the Senate is appropriating $5.7 billion for the Iraqi Security Forces Fund. The accompanying committee report states:

The funds shall be available to train, equip, and deploy Iraqi security forces as well as provide increased counterinsurgency capabilities.

That is certainly very good. Our troops cannot come home until Iraqi forces can hold their own.

When I was in Iraq just a few weeks ago, General Petraeus took us from the Baghdad airport to a training field nearby, where we saw about 12 Iraqi soldiers who were masked to hide their identity for fear of retribution from their fellow Iraqis as they went through training drills.

I have not been in the military. I can't grade these troops as to their progress. It certainly appeared that they were learning important skills. How many troops in Iraq are reaching that level of competence, I can't say. That is the purpose of the amendment.

Iraqi forces and police must be able to take the lead in conducting counterinsurgency operations. They must be able to protect their own borders, safeguard civilian populations, uphold and enforce the rule of law. When I met with General Petraeus, he said he believed he was making progress toward that goal, but I think we need to have a better metric to evaluate. We have received mixed messages and mixed information and statistics from the administration about how many Iraqis are trained and what their training really means.

Recent figures we received from the Department of Defense tell us that 136,000 Iraqis have been officially trained and equipped, but it is still not clear what that means. Does it mean that 136,000 Iraqi police, military, and border personnel are ready to defend their country, to protect its citizens and borders? Are they ready to take on and defeat the serious insurgent threat against American troops and Iraqis?

A March GAO study was very skeptical about the numbers. Joseph Christoff, Director of the GAO, testified before the House Government Reform Committee that:

Data on the status of Iraqi security forces is unreliable and provides limited information on their capabilities.

That was a result of a GAO report of the progress being made by our Department of Defense. We need answers to basic questions. That is why we are offering the amendment--Senator Kennedy, Senator Levin, and I--requiring the Department of Defense to assess unit readiness of Iraqi forces and evaluate the effectiveness and status of training of police forces.

Our amendment is straightforward. It is a reporting requirement asking for regular assessments of both the military forces and the police who are being trained with our tax dollars. This is simply accountability. As American tax dollars go into Iraq for the training of forces, American taxpayers have the right to know whether we are making progress. Are we meeting our goals? The GAO report indicated, for example, substantial desertions from the ranks of police in Iraq, the number in perhaps the tens of thousands. That is something we need to know if it continues. We need to know how many battalions of soldiers are trained, how effectively they can operate. They face a fierce insurgency. Are they ready for battle? We want to give them the tools to successfully confront it.

Finally, we also ask for an assessment of how many American forces will be needed in 6, 12, and 18 months. We are not imposing a deadline. What we are doing is saying to the administration: Tell us on the one hand the level of success which you are experiencing in training Iraqis to defend their own country and tell us what it means in terms of American forces. When can we expect troops to start returning if this Iraqi training is successful?

As Iraqi troop training expands and improves, we certainly hope American troops will come home. We all want to see progress in Iraq. I want to be able to measure it in a way that everyone in Congress--and certainly everyone across the country--knows we are making meaningful progress.

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Mr. DURBIN. The Senator from Massachusetts is correct. He makes a valuable point. When we in Congress ask the Department of Defense, how are we doing in terms of training troops for the Iraqi side, what are your guesses and best estimates in terms of when American troops can come home, many times they tell us, we can't share that information. They give us widely different numbers.

The Senator from Massachusetts makes the point that spokesmen for the U.S. military apparently speak to the media frequently, volunteering information about how quickly troops can come home to the United States. If it is good enough for CNN, should it not be good enough for the USA; should not American taxpayers be given this information? I think we want to know that.

I understand that we have to stay the course and finish our job. I am committed to that, even though I shared Senator Kennedy's sentiments about the initiation of the invasion. One of the problems with the insurgency is the question of whether we are a permanent occupying force. I hope we make it clear to the Iraqis that we are there to finish the job, to stabilize their country, and come home. As we start moving down the line on this amendment, which the Senator from Massachusetts and Senator Levin have cosponsored, we are going to be moving toward that goal and delivering the right message.

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Byrd-Lautenberg amendment. I would like to say a few words. I know we may be moving close to a vote, and the chairman of the committee has been patiently awaiting that possibility.

Tonight you are going to turn on your nightly news and try to get some information. People do it all the time. You expect when you turn on your television and turn on a newscast, the information being given to you is objective, at least as objective as people can make it. It isn't a paid advertisement; it is the news. If you are running a paid advertisement, you would know it. It would have laundry detergent on it or some new pharmaceutical drug or a political ad with a disclaimer at the bottom.

When you turn on your newscast, you don't expect to get hit by an ad that doesn't look like an ad. That is what the Byrd amendment is all about. The General Accounting Office took a look at some of the ads that were being sent out by the Bush administration for their policies and programs and said they went too far. They didn't identify the videos they were sending to these television stations were actually produced by the Bush administration, by these agencies, to promote a particular point of view. They basically said these ads deceived the American people. They were propaganda from the Government.

We decided a long time ago you couldn't do that. If you were going to put that kind of information up to try to convince the American people, one way or the other, you have an obligation to tell them so. The basic rule in this country is people want to hear both sides of the story, then make up their own minds. They want to know what is a fact and what is an opinion. Make up your own mind. You can't do it when there is a deception involved.

It is that deception that Senator Byrd is addressing. The Byrd amendment is so brief and to the point, it is worth repeating:

None of the funds provided in this Act or any other Act may be used by a Federal agency to produce any prepackaged news story unless the story includes a clear notification to the audience that the story was prepared or funded by that Federal agency.

That is pretty simple. Tell us who prepared it. If it was prepared at taxpayer expense by the Senate, it should disclose that. If it was prepared by an agency of the Bush administration, disclose it. Then the American people decide. They watch the show. They say: That is a pretty interesting point of view. That happens to be what the official Government point of view is. I wonder what the other side of the story is.

You have a right to ask that question. But what if it wasn't disclosed? What if what you thought was a news story turned out to be an ad, propaganda? That is a deception. It is a deception Senator Byrd is trying to end.

We sent the General Accounting Office out and we said: Take a look at two or three Government agencies in the Bush administration. See how they are using these videotapes. According to the GAO, the Office of National Drug Control Policy violated the publicity and propaganda prohibition in our law when it produced and distributed fake news stories called video news releases as part of its National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. There is nothing wrong with fighting drugs.

We want to protect our children from that possibility. We want to end the scourge of drug abuse in America. But be honest about it. If it is a Government-produced program, then identify it. That is all Senators BYRD and LAUTENBERG say in their amendment. In a separate report, the GAO found that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services violated publicity and propaganda prohibition by sending out more fake news stories about the benefits of the new prescription drug law for seniors. I was on the Senate floor when that was debated. There are pros and cons--people who are against it and who are for it. There are two sides to the story. Here came the official Government press release suggesting: Here are the facts for you, Mr. and Mrs. America. It turns out they didn't identify that that official news release came from an agency of the Bush administration.

They used phony reporters, phony news stories, and they told the viewers certain things they hoped they would believe. It turns out they were deceiving the American people.

Remember the case of Armstrong Williams? Interesting fellow. He was hired by the Federal Department of Education to promote the new No Child Left Behind law on his nationally syndicated television show and urged other journalists to do the same. We paid him taxpayer dollars of $240,000 to go on his talk show and say nice things about the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind law. Well, is that fair? Is that where you want to spend your tax dollars? Would it not have been worth a few bucks to put the money into the classroom for children, instead of putting on contract this man who never disclosed his conflict of interest and went about talking on his syndicated TV show as if he were an objective judge? He was so embarrassed by this that the Department stopped paying him and he issued something of an apology. The fact is, he used our Federal taxpayer dollars as an incentive to promote a point of view and didn't tell the American people, deceiving them in the process.

The Social Security Administration has gone through the same thing when it comes to the President's privatization plan. They will be producing these fake news stories and video press releases that mislead people about the nature of the challenge of the problem.

I have an example. One of the things that went out in the Social Security Administration's phony news story was the following statement: ``In 2041, the Social Security trust funds will be exhausted.'' That was put out as an official Government statement--not identified but sent out. It turns out it is not true. In 2041, the Social Security trust fund will not be exhausted. If we don't touch the Social Security trust fund, it will make every single payment to every single retiree, every single month of every single year until 2041. Then if we do nothing to change it after 36 years, it will continue to pay up to 75 to 80 percent. The trust fund is not going to be exhausted. That is a misstatement put out by this administration without identifying the fact that they are trying to promote a point of view which, sadly, is not correct and not honest.

So what Senator Byrd said is simple. If you want to put out something as a Federal Government agency, trust the American people. Tell them who you are. Let them decide whether it is worth believing. Don't pull the wool over their eyes. America is entitled to hear both sides of the story. We are entitled to know what is fact, what is fiction, what is basically news, and what is opinion. I think we can trust the American people to make that judgment. If Members of the Senate cannot trust the American people to make a judgment, how do they submit their own names for election? That is what we do regularly in an election year. I trust their judgment. I trust Senator Byrd's amendment.

I yield the floor.

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