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I think these points are very important, because I would not want us, as we get further and further away from September 11, I do not want our memories to begin to fade about what a horrible thing that cancer did to us. Do

[Page: H6900]  GPO's PDF

   Thank goodness we have the President that we do. Thank goodness we have the team that we do, whether it is Vice President CHENEY, whether it is Condoleezza Rice, who, by the way, did an excellent job on ``60 Minutes'' the other night, or whether it is Don Rumsfeld, we have the right kind of team dedicated to go in and do the surgical procedure that is necessary to eradicate most of that cancer.

   But we have to give them a break and give them our support. So far this country has been very solid behind our President. I think the average mainstream American out there does not want people like ``60 Minutes'' talking about the weaknesses of our nuclear generating facilities. Instead, I think the average American out there wants this President and this Government to do what is necessary to make the security of this Nation safe for all future generations.

   That requires some pretty nasty stuff. War is nasty. But as Winston Churchill said, ``The only thing worse than war is losing the war.'' It is the same thing here. The only thing worse than eradicating terrorism , and I assure the Members, there will be collateral damage, the only thing worse than that is losing to bin Laden; losing to the fact that America would have to live under the threat of fear from this point on; that America would have to live and tolerate what the Taliban does to its own people, as reflected in the earlier comments by the gentlewoman from California regarding the rights of women in Afghanistan, and what bin Laden and the Taliban have done, what they have done to the women in Afghanistan.

   So I think it is very important for us to understand that there is nothing wrong with being patriotic, that there is nothing wrong for the United States of America to do what it is doing. I think sometimes when we find out that there has been a mistake, a regrettable mistake, that a bomb is dropped on a Red Cross warehouse, that we tend to forget what has gone right.

   Take a look at the military targets that day after day, night after night, our military has successfully hit without collateral damage. Take a look at how well executed this military mission has been. There is a lot to be proud of here. Our military has an incredible machine. Our military has very sophisticated command centers. Our military has the most sophisticated weapons ever known in the history of man. These are weapons that try and minimize collateral damage.

   So I am a little concerned when I start to see sympathy actually heading to the Taliban, when I start to see some kind of justification for what the Taliban has done. We do not see it directly yet, but we are headed that way.

   Kudos, by the way, to the Mayor of New York City, who had a $10 million check in his hand but gave it back because he said nothing can justify the horrible actions of these evil people. What they have done is evil. They are evil. There is only one answer with evil, we have to eradicate it. We cannot love it away, we cannot hope it away, we cannot go and hold the hands of the Taliban and say, We would like you to adapt yourself more to Western behavior. We would like you to commit to us that you are going to give women rights in your country.

   That is not going to happen. These Taliban leaders and bin Laden and his outfit, they are cancerous. It is a deadly, horrible cancer. We have tasted some of it. It hit us hard in New York City, and it is going to hit us again if we do not pursue the eradication of it in a relentless fashion. That is our obligation as Congressmen. That is an inherent requirement of the Government, that is, to provide homeland security for the people of America and for our allies.

   One of the things that I think we need to improve on, I talked to airport security. Clearly, we have to improve immediately airport security, and we have. Obviously, the Federal Aviation Administration and others, the security has been stepped up significantly.

   But on a long-term basis we have to make dramatic changes in our airport security. As I said earlier, I think we can do that without creating a Federal bureaucracy of tens of thousands of new Federal employees. So we need to have airport security.

   We also need to do a couple of other things. We need to tighten up our borders. I know that is not politically correct, to say that, look, if you are a guest in the United States, we are going to check into your background. If you are coming to visit the United States, if you want to immigrate to the United States, we have some certain rights as the United States to see who we are letting into this country.

   We were getting to a point in our society where it seemed to be politically incorrect, where it would be wrong for Members to go to a student whose visa expired, and by the way, of the terrorists, the Wall Street Journal today had an excellent article. Three or four of those terrorists were on expired student visas .

   The student visa program in this country has gone awry. It is out of control. We have, I think, 2.5 million people, and I can look that up, but I think there are 2 1/2 million people in this country today that are on expired student visas ; and we are not doing much to get them out of here.

   When people come to visit the United States, that is a privilege. This country has to start to enforce our borders. That is not to say at all, not in any way, that this great country should shut its borders. I do not believe in that. Unless one is truly Native American, we all have been the beneficiary of America's policy on immigration. It has built a great country.

   But having open borders does not mean we have to have uncontrolled borders. We should be having open borders that are controlled and managed and worked to the benefit of everybody. It works for the protection of the people even coming into this country. So our borders have to be tightened.

   I will tell Members something else we have to deploy at our borders. We have to put in those face-scanning computers that are able to determine if one is wanted or if one is a terrorist anywhere in the world, or find out just exactly who it is that is coming across, are they using false IDs, et cetera. We have to use other high-tech equipment at these borders.

   Some people, they jump up, and I have already heard this as a result of our antiterrorism bill, and say, Invasion of privacy. Do not invade privacy. Let me tell the Members something, I have not seen a proposal yet that has been on this floor that is unconstitutional, an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.

   It is not the intent of anybody in this House to invade or violate the Constitution. After all, we take oaths to stand up and protect the Constitution. We do not take some kind of assigned mission to violate the Constitution.

   So it is not that we are violating the Constitution with, for example, face-scanning computers and other technical equipment. The fact is, life is going to be a little more inconvenient. When we go to the airport, we are going to have to open our suitcases two or three times. They are going to have a right to look through our loose clothes, to look through our purse or wallet, which we may consider private.

   But the fact is in our society we have to take some affirmative steps to provide homeland security for our Nation. What is wrong at the borders with having computer-scanning equipment and data like that that can give us the kind of information we need?

   A lot of this is a game of quick information. We cannot sit there and detain or stop the borders while we spend 3 or 4 hours questioning everybody who wants to come across. We have to depend on quick information. We have to depend on an informational system that could quickly give us that kind of information. That is the computer-technical equipment.

   In Britain, take a look at Britain, the United Kingdom, who have been wonderful allies. Boy, have they stood with us through this from day one. From hour one, from the moment that Tony Blair and his government found out that the United States had been attacked, they stood tall, as did many of our other colleagues. But I want to talk about Great Britain right now.

   They have suffered terror for years. They have had terrorists blow up bombs in London and places like that. They have put pretty good security equipment in London and throughout their country. They have those face-scanning cameras. They do not come

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[Time: 23:40]

   They have lots of security cameras almost on every city block in London figuring out exactly what is going on. They scan the city. It has not brought down a violation of privacy in the United Kingdom. In fact, it has made the United Kingdom a lot safer. It is kind of like putting a guard in the bank.

   I can remember as a young man, when I used to go into the bank, there were never police officers standing in the lobby of a bank; and well, then bank robberies kept happening and happening. Guess what happened when we put a police officer in the lobby of the bank? It did not violate anybody's privacy on banking laws. What it did was lower the crime in that bank, made it safer for everybody.

   That is exactly what we need to do at our borders and athletic events that what we need to do, where it is otherwise feasible, is provide the kind of security, the TV cameras and things like that we can do without intrusion into the Constitution. So I have not seen any, any movement that violates the Constitution of the United States.

   Clearly, the point I am making here, we have to, and I would like to point out on this border, is that we have got to do something very quickly. Just as important as our airport security is our border security. We have got to tighten up the border between, for example, the United States and Canada. For the most part, that border seems to be unsecured. We have cooperation from our neighbors to the north. Canada is a wonderful country. They are great allies. I do not think one could ask for two better neighbors than we have. Mexico on one side on the south and Canada on the north.

   In fact, just for my colleagues' information, we have had recruiters that have told us that down in the South they have gotten calls from Mexican citizens who want to come up and join the United States military because they want to fight for the United States against this terrible cancer that we suffered on September 11 and we are now trying to eradicate.

   So we have got cooperation to tighten those borders, but let me give you some statistics, and this is off of Senator Feinstein. She put out a press release. She identified weaknesses of the U.S. visa system. I think this is an excellent piece of work. I want to just give a few statistics.

   An unregulated visa waiver program in which 23 million people arrived in this country in fiscal year 2000 from 29 different countries, almost no scrutiny. An unmonitored nonimmigrant visa system in which 7.1 million tourists, business visitors, foreign students, and temporary workers arrived. To date, the INS does not have a reliable tracking system to determine how many of these visitors left when they were supposed to leave. The INS cannot track it.

   Among those 7.1 million nonimmigrants, 500,000 foreign nationals entered on foreign student visas . The foreign student visa system is one of the most underregulated systems we have today.

   So there are a couple of things that I want to bring up, just review very quickly. One, we have got to increase airport security, but we do not need to create a new Federal bureaucracy to do it. We clearly have no Federal oversight on it.

   Two, we have to tighten our borders, and let me just talk about the third thing I think whose time has come.

   This is the third thing I wanted to visit with, and that is the new strategic setting. This is a three-pronged threat as I have got on this poster. I will go in reverse.

   Information warfare. Clearly what does the United States have to do to protect, as we know, everything in

   our lives today is focused very, very heavily on computer and information. How do we protect that information? How do we protect homeland security to our information warfare?

   Terrorist threat. Clearly it was demonstrated to the United States that we had some huge gaps in our security system, our homeland security to provide protection from terrorist attacks. Now, remember, that gap was a horrible gap; and the results were horribly, horribly tragic. But the fact is we have had a lot of terrorist threats, including the one on the millennium that tried to come across the border that was stopped. We can protect against that. We can enhance that.

   The one I really want to focus on is the missile-delivered weapons of mass destruction attack. Keep in mind when we talk about missile defense, which I think absolutely has to be imminent for the defense of this country, and I think it is an inherent obligation of all of us sitting on this floor to provide a missile defensive system for this country. Keep in mind that a lot of people out there assume we already have missile defense; that if somebody fires a missile against the United States of America, that we have the capability to defend against it. We do not. We do not have that capability today. And that ought to be our highest priority as far as national security from an outside source. I think it is really, really critical. Let me mention a couple of other things.

   Most people, when we have talk about missiles coming against the United States, think of a nuclear missile. Of course, that is a worst case scenario; and we know that there are countries, there has been proliferation around the world of countries capable of delivering nuclear missiles. But when we also talk about nuclear missiles, a lot of people think about an intentional launch against the United States. I want to say, think about this for a moment, I believe that the possibility of an accidental launch against the United States of America is very possible with a nuclear warhead or a missile with a chemical type of weapon on top of it.

   So a missile defensive system protects us not only against an intentional launch against the United States but an accidental launch. A lot of people, including some of our colleagues, have pooh-poohed the idea that I say this could happen by accident. They do not give it too much credibility. Guess what happened 2 weeks ago. Out in the Black Sea, the Ukrainian Navy fired, by accident, a missile. What did it hit? It hit a civilian Russian airliner. It shot it right out of the sky. It killed everybody on board. That was accidental. If it can happen in a military exercise out in the Black Sea, let me assure my colleagues, it can happen with a missile aimed at the United States of America.

   I am not trying to create any kind of panic because I think the United States of America has some time, not a long period of time, but some time and we have the technological capability to do it to provide a missile defensive system for this country.

   There was a treaty signed not too many years ago and I intend to go into that in much more depth later on this week, but it was the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty. The President of the United States has justifiably and very accurately called that treaty obsolete. The treaty is obsolete with the exception of one provision within that treaty, contained within the four corners. The authors of that treaty, the first people that drew it up, realized that times on would change. They must have realized that the United States and Russia in the 1970's were the only two countries capable of delivering missiles, either intentionally or accidentally with nuclear warheads. They must have realized if it is possible that in the future it could expand and there could be proliferation of nuclear weapons in other countries. If that occurred and if that became a threat to the national sovereignty of either Russia or the United States, then under this treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, there would be a clause that is contained in the treaty, that would allow either country to withdraw from that treaty upon a 6-month notice.

   That is the first step that has to take place from an administrative point of view. This administration is preparing to do exactly that. They ought to do that. That is what leadership calls for.

   From the technical point of view, this government and this Congress and, fortunately, our colleagues down the hallway have dedicated resources to continue the research to perfect that technology that we have. We are very close. We are very close to providing the necessary information to build a missile defensive system in this country. We have got to get closer and we have got to close that gap and we have

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[Time: 23:50]

   Let me point out that the threat is real. Rogue states and weapons of mass destruction. Among the 20 Third World Countries that have or are in the process of developing weapons of mass destruction are:

   Iran. Iran has nuclear weapons, they have chemical weapons, they have biological weapons and they have advanced missile technology.

   Iraq. Iraq, same thing: Nuclear, chemical, biological, advanced missile technology.

   Libya. Well, almost the same thing, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, advanced technical information.

   North Korea has all four of them. Syria has all except the biological weapons.

   This chart tells us a lot. This chart tells us that there are people out there in the world that are not friends of the United States. In fact, they are foes of the United States. And while we sit without a missile defensive system, they continue to build a missile offensive system.

   How can we, as Members of Congress, continue to sit idle or even advocate the idea of sitting idle, not building a defensive system, when we know there are countries like these countries out there that are aggressively building an offensive system? These systems are not defensive. These countries are designing these weapons to go after somebody, to fire at somebody, to destroy somebody. And let me ask my colleagues, who do you think that target is? After September 11, I think it is easy to conclude. It is not just an asset of the United States located somewhere in the world. It could very well be within the borders of the United States of America.

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