Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, in this House, and indeed, in homes across America, we are debating whether to use force to disarm Saddam Hussein if he fails to comply with the resolutions of the United Nations, if he fails to submit to unfettered inspections, and even if we must go it alone.
The President has come before the Nation to make the case for strong intervention and to attempt to answer many of the difficult questions being posed by the American people: Why is Iraq unique when other nations possess weapons of mass destruction? Why now, when Iraq has been ignoring the U.N. resolutions for 11 years? What effect will this have on the broader war on terrorism? Will an invasion of Iraq in the end make us safer or more at risk?
All of these questions are legitimate. None admits of a simple answer; and none can be answered completely, depending, as they do, upon the unknowable caprice of a despot. But there are certain facts which I believe are indisputable.
First, Saddam Hussein has chemical and biological weapons, and is developing a nuclear weapons capacity.
Second, an inspection regime in which hundreds of acres of so-called palace grounds are off limits is no inspection regime at all. In fact, it is worse than no inspections, giving, as it does, a false sense of security and effectiveness.
Third, Saddam Hussein will never submit to a real inspection regime without the credible threat of force.
Fourth, we cannot continue to allow Saddam Hussein to fire on American pilots who seek to enforce United Nations resolutions.
Finally, the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons program will only grow over time; and in time, he will have the atomic bomb.
Of all the dilemmas facing our Nation in light of these facts, the central issue is this: How imminent is the threat to this country from Iraq?
The threats we face after September 11 are different in kind than those we have faced in the past. We will never likely see enemy troops massing on our borders, threatening to dominate Europe, or attacking our bases with large fleets of ships or planes. The predominant threat we must now address comes from terrorists and the states that sponsor them, terrorists who cannot be contained and cannot be deterred, and terrorists that can act with great suddenness and ferocity, causing dramatic loss of life.
It is fair to ask ourselves whether, on September 10, prior to the devastating attacks on this country, we would have adjudged al Qaeda an imminent enough threat to justify the strenuous use of force to rout out the terrorists in Afghanistan. Apparently, we did not. Just as plainly, we cannot wait until 3,000 more Americans lie in their graves to warrant our intervention when other threats materialize.
The narrow question before Congress right now is whether the threat from Iraq is imminent enough to support a resolution authorizing the use of force to compel this armament if persuasion fails. On the basis of information I have received, both classified and unclassified, from meetings with the President, National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, regional experts, defectors and others, I believe it is; and I am concerned that the failure of such a resolution at a time when our Commander-in-Chief is before the United Nations would be deleterious to our efforts to engage that world body.
The original resolution drafted by the President was too broad, and I did not support it. Through negotiation with the Democratic leadership, the resolution was considerably narrowed to require the President to exhaust all efforts through diplomatic and other peaceful means before any resort to force could be made, to limit the scope of his authority to Iraq, rather than the entire region, to require compliance with the War Powers Act and to compel frequent consultation with Congress.
In the House Committee on International Relations on which I serve, I supported amendments to narrow the President's authority further still, including the Biden-Lugar amendment, which contained even stronger language compelling the use of force to compel disarmament. These amendments were unsuccessful, and I supported the bipartisan compromise resolution on final passage out of the committee, and I will support it here on the floor.
My vote in favor of this resolution and my desire to support the administration's efforts that the United Nations should not, however, be taken as an unequivocal endorsement of the administration's handling of Iraq over the last year. It is not. The administration must not go about this alone or unilaterally but redouble its effort to enlist the support of our allies until it is successful, as I believe it can be. The administration must change the nature of its rhetoric, rhetoric which on a host of issue has shown too great a willingness, at times an eagerness, to go it alone on a whole range of issues, a policy and a tone which has made the process of gathering international support much more difficult than it should have been.
I share the concerns expressed by hundreds of my constituents that this country not rush to establish a precedent that every country is justified in unilateral military action against all perceived threats and that the best way to distinguish our conduct from other nations considering their own preemptive actions in the future is to persevere in our determination to build international support for international action.
I hope that military force is not necessary. As the President said in his speech last night, ``Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable.'' But if force is required to disarm Iraq, I have great faith in the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces. They will do their job bravely and effectively, and we will be successful. We will win the war.
Let us resolve also to take the longer and no less complex task of winning the peace. We must not risk the lives of American soldiers to replace one Baath party dictator with another, to allow Iraq to disintegrate or degenerate into tribal warfare. We must be committed to the long-term prosperity of the Iraqi people, to the establishment of the democratic institutions, and to the rights of speech and association and the free exercise of religion.
We must embrace a broad vision, one that works to democratize the Middle East, to secure its rebirth and the elevation of its civilization, and a vision comparable to the Marshall Plan at the end of World War II. This will be no minor undertaking and will represent a significant departure from past policies, which have too often favored oil and friendly autocracy over principle and popular democracy. It will also require an investment in the very future of the very nations which now threaten us. But as post World War II Europe has illustrated, with every effort we make and every dollar we contribute, our own peace, security and prosperity will be rewarded.
On September 10, the danger from terrorists was imminent, and we took no action. On September 11, we were devastated. Now it will forever be September 12, the day we realized that our military might alone, stationary and defensive, could not deter, could not prevent, could not contain the threats against us. And so we must gather the freedom-loving nations of the world and act to disarm Iraq peacefully if at all possible, but to disarm. And in time also to rebuild so that what was once a cradle of civilization can again be a light to the world.
(break)
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to respond briefly to a couple of the comments made by my colleague from North Carolina.
Although we agree on many of the same underlying facts, we have disagreed on the conclusion to be drawn from those facts. But there was one point in particular on which I wanted to note my agreement, and that is the point that I think it would be very important for the administration to show more of the evidence it possesses of Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction.
The President in his speech last night quoted, quite appropriately, from President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. But probably the most vivid image that most Americans have of that period was the demonstration of the aerial photographs of missile silos in Cuba, the very direct, very unequivocal proof of that threat 90 miles from our shore.
So, too, I think it would be important for this administration to be more forthcoming with the evidence it possesses, to demonstrate unequivocally to the American people, for whom many still have questions that Saddam Hussein does in fact possess chemical and biological weapons, because he does possess them; is in fact working to acquire nuclear weapons, because in fact he is working in that direction.
Now, I realize that that chore is made more difficult in some respects, but easier in others. More difficult in the fact that some of the technology we are talking about is dual-use technology, and from aero-satellite it may not be possible to determine whether the rebuilding of chemical and biological weapon facilities which is currently ongoing can be argued to be done in the interests of some civilian application.
But while there are those challenges, and, of course the challenge that once we disclose our knowledge of the whereabouts of chemical or biological weapons, those weapons will be moved, thwarting later inspections, while those challenges are, nonetheless, real and great, we also have a commensurate increase in our technological ability. Our ability to gather intelligence is much greater than it was in the early 1960s. And, notwithstanding the cost of sharing some of that evidence, the benefit that would accrue to the administration in making its case to the American people would be substantial.
Iraq, Saddam Hussein, his foreign minister, his spokesman, all unequivocally deny the presence of chemical and biological weapons. Showing the proof of that lie, I believe, is very important for the administration to do and very much within its capability.
The second point I wish to emphasize tonight which I think the administration will be well served to emphasize and which was lacking, perhaps, in the President's speech, and that is the importance of talking more deliberately and more thoroughly about the Iraq that America would like to see in the future, an Iraq with free institutions, an Iraq that is once again prosperous. Our long-term commitment for that is what it will have to be, a prosperous and free Iraq.
This is not only important I think in terms of the American people understanding that this is not about oil, that this is about the long-term peace and security of that region and our own long-term peace and security, but it is also important for the rest of the world to understand. And I think it may be even most important for the Iraqi people to understand, the possibilities that the future holds for the people of Iraq once the regime in Baghdad changes.
So I would urge the administration, notwithstanding the support that I think will come from this body and from the Senate for the resolution, to be more demonstrative in the proof that it does possess of the evidence of weapons of mass destruction now and also to be more thoughtful and more articulate in describing the type of Iraq the administration is committed to seeing.