Duncan Hunter for President 2012: Reasons 38 through 45

38. U.S. DOES NOT CONDONE TORTURE -- (House of Representatives - November 15, 2005)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, around the world right now American troops are being disserved by a mistake promulgated by the American and international news media to the effect that American law allows torture. That is the lie that is being propagated by electronic and written news media around the world.

Mr. Speaker, we have the law here. It is title 18, section 2340A; and I want to read it. It says, ``Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.''

The United States does not allow torture. It is against the law to torture people, and if you torture someone to death you may be executed.

39. RELIEF EFFORTS FOR VICTIMS OF HURRICANE KATRINA -- (House of Representatives - September 08, 2005)

Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, I want to talk a little bit about the wonderful people of Rescue Task Force who are headquartered in San Diego, who have been operating in the disaster area in New Orleans, and use that discussion about them to reflect on all the great private efforts and public efforts to help the victims who have been created by this incredible disaster in New Orleans.

Rescue Task Force is a small group. It is headed up by Wendell Cutting, who is my chief of staff in San Diego and a guy who a couple of years ago was given only 3 months to live with terminal cancer and who has continued to survive and I think survive as an inspiration based on his continued drive and enthusiasm for helping people.

Wendell and Gary Becks have gone around the world in setting up medical clinics, providing food, providing medical services in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Albania, in Central America, and now are providing a helping hand in New Orleans.

A couple of days ago, they allowed me to go along on one of their missions. We went to Houma, Louisiana. I had with me Scott Turner, who is retiring this year after 10 years in the NFL, a wonderful cornerback who played for the Redskins and the Chargers and the Broncos. And along with Scott was Larry Nelson, the mayor of Yuma, Arizona; and Roy Tyler, who is a businessman from San Diego who now has Tyler's restaurants in Yuma, Arizona.

When we landed in Houston, we had a lot of supplies there ready, and we trucked them into the affected area in Houma. We went to the civic center in Houma with the rescue task force personnel, and one of the things that they needed was beds because you have literally tens of thousands of people who are living in gymnasium settings; that is, where they go into a civic center or a gymnasium and they may have a blanket or two, but they do not have a bed, a mattress, between them and the ground.

So we had a need there, and rescue task force personnel managed to run down, working with some of the big stores, 1,000 beds for the folks there, and we got those paid for. I got a call yesterday that they, in fact, had been delivered.

But I was really impressed when I was at the civic center there, this refugee center, or evacuee center. I was impressed with the people of Louisiana, because they had so many volunteers, they actually were having to turn them away, and they had mountains of clothes that had been donated to the point where they said, do not bring any more clothes.

They had a great medical system set up where people from the disaster were getting, in most cases, more checkups than they had had in years with the doctors and nurses available, and they were getting good, hot meals.

We went in the next day by air boat, into the streets and the communities that were under water in New Orleans, and I want to report that our military personnel, the National Guard folks, the active duty folks, and also lots of other folks from other agencies like ATF and reserve sheriffs' organizations are doing a wonderful job now in providing that very necessary security.

Now, I think it is a shame that we have to spend so much manpower on security and have active duty military forces come in that have to provide that security, but that is a fact of life, and they are doing a great job.

Madam Speaker, along those lines, I think that the real tragedy of this hurricane, aside from those individuals who lost their lives, is not the water and it is not the hurricane itself or the damage, the property damage, because all of that can and will be rebuilt. The real tragedy to me was that group of people, part of that generation of folks who live in New Orleans, which included people who shot at the rescue helicopters, who looted, and who committed crimes against their fellow citizens during this time of tragedy, during and shortly after the hurricane.

I think we need to put together a program or legislation to make sure that we do not reinstitute the projects, the location where people have lived for generations in a system that has not produced a high degree of moral compass and a high work ethic, and all of the other things you need to have for a solid community.

So let us work to rebuild not just New Orleans, but let us build a new generation of young people in New Orleans who will be outstanding citizens.

40. BORDER PROTECTION, ANTITERRORISM, AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION CONTROL ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - December 15, 2005)

Part B amendment No. 11 printed in House Report 109-347 offered by Mr. Hunter of California:

(1) Hundreds of people die crossing our international border with Mexico every year.

(2) Illegal narcotic smuggling along the Southwest border of the United States is both dangerous and prolific.

(3) Over 155,000 non-Mexican individuals were apprehended trying to enter the United States along the Southwest border in fiscal year 2005.

(4) The number of illegal entrants into the United States through the Southwest border is estimated to exceed one million people a year.

SEC. 902. CONSTRUCTION OF FENCING AND SECURITY IMPROVEMENTS IN BORDER AREA FROM PACIFIC OCEAN TO GULF OF MEXICO.

Section 102(b) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-208; 8 U.S.C. 1103 note) is amended--

``(A) REINFORCED FENCING.--In carrying out subsection (a), the Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide for least 2 layers of reinforced fencing, the installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors--

``(i) extending from 10 miles west of the Tecate, California, port of entry to 10 miles east of the Tecate, California, port of entry;

``(ii) extending from 10 miles west of the Calexico, California, port of entry to 5 miles east of the Douglas, Arizona, port of entry;

``(iii) extending from 5 miles west of the Columbus, New Mexico, port of entry to 10 miles east of El Paso, Texas;

``(iv) extending from 5 miles northwest of the Del Rio, Texas, port of entry to 5 miles southeast of the Eagle Pass, Texas, port of entry; and

``(v) extending 15 miles northwest of the Laredo, Texas, port of entry to the Brownsville, Texas, port of entry.

``(i) in subparagraph (A)(ii), the Secretary shall ensure that an interlocking surveillance camera system is installed along such area by May 30, 2006 and that fence construction is completed by May 30, 2007; and

``(ii) in subparagraph (A)(v), the Secretary shall ensure that fence construction from 15 miles northwest of the Laredo, Texas port of entry to 15 southeast of the Laredo, Texas port of entry is completed by December 31, 2006.

``(C) EXCEPTION.--If the topography of a specific area has an elevation grade that exceeds 10%, the Secretary may use other means to secure such area, including the use of surveillance and barrier tools. ''.

(a) In General.--The Secretary of Homeland Security shall conduct a study on the construction of a state-of-the-art barrier system along the northern international land and maritime border of the United States and shall include in the study--

(b) Report.--Not later than one year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall report to the Congress on the study described in subsection (a).

It is the sense of the Congress that the Secretary of Homeland Security shall take all necessary steps to secure the Southwest international border for the purpose of saving lives, stopping illegal drug trafficking, and halting the flow of illegal entrants into the United States.

The Acting CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to House Resolution 610, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) and a Member opposed each will control 10 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, a few years ago, in fact in 1994, we mandated the construction of a fence in San Diego California, a triple fence. And that fence, with a basic fence on the border, a Border Patrol road, then a secondary higher fence with an overhang, a second Border Patrol road and then a third fence were designed to stop the massive drug trade and the smuggling of narcotics and people across what was the most prolific smugglers' corridor in America, that between Tijuana and San Diego.

At that time we had some 10 border murders a year. We had gangs that roamed that area that they called a ``no man's land'' to the point where Joseph Wambaugh wrote the best seller ``Lines and Shadows'' about the no man's land that existed between Tijuana and San Diego. We had some 300 drug trucks a month crashing that border and running up with cocaine for our children.

We built that fence, Mr. Chairman, and in doing that we knocked down the murders from 10 a year to zero. We knocked down the border drive-throughs from 300 a month to zero. We knocked down the smuggling of both illegal aliens and narcotics to almost zero where that fence was.

I might say that the great Border Patrol chief, Mr. Sylvester Reyes, stood in testimony, even adversely to his administration, and testified to the sufficiency of that fence.

This proposal, Mr. Chairman, is 700 additional miles of fence, and it has a great humanitarian aspect. The first piece of this fence, 361 miles from Calexico to Douglas, Arizona, is the area through which most of the people come who have represented those 400 deaths a year by dehydration in the deserts of Arizona.

If we had 400 college kids or high school kids or neighborhood kids a year dying in a lake in a city, we would immediately fence it. By fencing that area we are going to prevent those deaths. We cannot fence it by the next hot season, which will start in the end of May this coming year, but we have in this legislation directed interlocking cameras so we can see people when they come across the border while we are building the fence and we can respond. We can both deport them, and we can also save their lives, Mr. Chairman.

The second piece that is mandatory here is the 15 miles on each side of Laredo. Across the river from Laredo is Nuevo Laredo where the drug lords reign, where they kill the local law enforcement officers within, some cases, a few hours of their taking office. If we can dry up that massive land smuggling with backpacks full of cocaine coming across that smugglers' jump-off point in Nuevo Laredo by fencing both sides with a double fence, 10 miles on each side of Nuevo Laredo, and we want to have it done and it is mandated by this bill by the end of the year this next year, we will have done great things for the people of America and the good citizens of Nuevo Laredo.

This has a great humanitarian aspect to it, and we costed it out. It is roughly $2.2 billion. That is a fraction of what we spend each year to incarcerate the criminal aliens whom we currently have in massive numbers in our Federal penitentiaries and in our local jails.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my good colleague, Mr. King, for yielding.

And I listened, as you probably did, to some of the Democrat Members who were decrying the state of the world and ``woe is me'' and things are going terribly, according to them. And as the gentleman took the floor, as I watched him take the floor, and started talking about the Republican legacy in national security that they were complaining about and the Republican legacy of peace through strength, I was reminded about coming here in 1980 when a guy named Ronald Reagan was running for President. And we just finished with a President who was very, very similar to Jimmy Carter, the gentleman who had his tenure in office somewhat truncated by Ronald Reagan, and that was Bill Clinton. And I thought of the fact that the Democrats entered the Clinton administration with 15 Army divisions, combat divisions, and when they walked out of the White House and that administration left, they had cut the United States Army by about 40 percent. They were down to 10 divisions, and many of those divisions were undermanned, and then I was reminded that they were the same people that complained that we didn't have enough people on the ground when we went into Iraq. And then I was reminded that, as we are talking about Iraq, and today there is a big hue and cry to get rid of Secretary Rumsfeld among the Democrats, in the Democrat cloakroom, thankfully, 6,000 miles away that sentiment is not shared by the Americans who are reenlisting in the combat zone, in places like the Sunni triangle, where the 101st is well over 100 percent of their expected reenlistment rate. The First Marine Division out in the very dangerous Anbar Province is up well over 100 percent of their expected reenlistment rate. So the people that serve in combat under Don Rumsfeld seem to like him.

But I was reminded, as I listened to that ``woe is me'' discussion by the Democrats, that it is the Republican Party that is the party of peace through strength, and the American people rely on us to do that. And I think that is one reason they are trying to pull down Secretary Don Rumsfeld.

And I thought it was interesting today, as the President announced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the attack that drove those planes into New York, into Washington, D.C., and into Pennsylvania, will soon be coming to a courtroom near us in the United States because he was captured and he was interrogated and others were interrogated in what the Democrats call inhumane methods, even though our lawyers and all of the people who scrutinized the methods of interrogation found that they were legal methods of interrogation, uncomfortable but legal and not torture, and that that person and others who joined him, his team of terrorists who joined him in masterminding the 9/11 attacks on America, will be coming to a courtroom near us, soon to be prosecuted, truly brought to justice because of the leadership of this administration and because of some of these methods of interrogation that have been associated with Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld. And the President laid out today how thousands of Americans had their lives spared, how we stopped attacks and we stopped plots to attack our country in mid course, including not only attacks that would include explosives but also attacks that would include things like anthrax, because we had a forward-leaning, tough, aggressive posture in this war against terror.

So as the Democrats sip their lattes and find themselves very comfortable in what they describe as a very uncomfortable world, the reason they are able to be here having enjoyed almost 5 years after the 9/11 attack with no further attacks on the United States is partly because we had a President with an aggressive, forward-leaning policy against terrorism; that he went out and took them on; that he hunted them down in places where they didn't think they would ever be found, with the leadership of Don Rumsfeld, and we kept them off balance. And because of that, because they were kept off balance, because we penetrated them, because we were able to get into their cells and we were able to discover who was masterminding these plots against the United States, we were able to keep our people safe.

And I am further reminded that when Don Rumsfeld's military, our military, led by General Tommy Franks, was driving that iron spearhead up toward Baghdad, you already had the Democrats complaining that there were not enough troops and that he would get bogged down. And as you saw them on talk shows, the talk shows in which Democrats were complaining that he would get bogged down were interrupted by news announcements that Tommy Franks had taken yet other stronghold of Saddam Hussein. And they would seem to be almost disappointed rather than joyous when they would hear that American troops had, in fact, mowed down another line of defense by Saddam Hussein; so they stopped criticizing for a while. Then after we took Baghdad, the criticism started again. And this time the criticism was what I called the ``both ways criticism.'' In the same discussion, a Democrat leader would say we need to have more troops on the ground and in the next sentence he would say we want to have an Iraqi face on the security apparatus. Well, how do you have an Iraqi face on a security apparatus if you stuff enough troops into that country to have a GI on every corner? The facts are you cannot have it both ways.

And then the other criticism was, we should have kept the Iraqi military intact.

The Iraqi military had over 10,000 Sunni generals. What do you do with 10,000 Sunni generals? You don't do anything. And that is what the army would have done to secure Iraq: nothing. The idea of having that army where corruption was the order of the day, where you had people who were simply following their own political agenda and making their own way and making their own profits and the idea that we would maintain that army as the new safeguard or security force in Iraq to protect this fledgling, newly elected, democratically elected government coming up makes no sense at all. The smartest thing we ever did was starting with scratch with that military and teaching the new army the chain of command; teaching them respect both up and down the chain of command; teaching them to take responsibility; teaching them to have a thing called NCOs, noncommissioned officers; teaching them to be decent to people; teaching them not to be corrupt. And that is why today the best force that we have in Iraq is not the police force, is not the security force. It is the military. And even people who have criticized this administration in the way they conducted the war concur that there is a strong core in this Iraqi army. That is because we built it from scratch, and we didn't start with 15,000 Sunni generals.

Now, the last thing, and I have mentioned it, that the administration was condemned for and that Don Rumsfeld became a lightning rod for was uncomfortable interrogation methods. Well, you know, the world is a tough place, and the people that we are dealing with are not made out of cotton candy. And the fact that we were able to get information from terrorists because they are the ones that have the information, not Americans, but because the terrorists are the ones that have the information, the fact that we were able to get that information from them and use that to stop other actions against the United States before they could mature, before they could result in American casualties accrued to the benefit of America's security.

So when I look at this ``woe is me'' and we have got the real security plan and if we had only taken the other road, you will notice that the road not taken is always the smoothest one, where we had all the Sunni generals, that we would have used those to somehow bring security to Iraq, or if we had stuffed enough GIs into Iraq that somehow there would not be any car bombings or would not be any violence, or if we would just ask people politely to give up the names of their co-terrorists, they would do that and we wouldn't have to be tough on them in interrogations. All those positions, I think, define why the American people, Democrats and Republicans, rely on Republicans for national security.

42. COMPARISON OF VOTING RECORDS IN REGARD TO NATIONAL DEFENSE -- (House of Representatives - April 28, 2004)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for yielding. I have been watching the national debate and, of course, all of the talk shows and all of the discussion about Senator Kerry's service to the country, the President's service to the country, who is patriotic, who is not patriotic. I think that it is important to lay out in lines of demarcation across what is fair political comment and what is not. I think that, first, service to our country gives any Member who has served, especially in a war like Vietnam, the platform, the right, to certainly have a position, a credible position on what we should do with respect to national defense. On the other hand, service in the military does not by and of itself mean that you are not accountable for, if you are elected to Congress, your voting record.

What I would like to do is to simply say that I have no quarrel with Senator Kerry's having served in Vietnam. I think that is a good thing and I think that being a veteran is something people should be commended for. On the other hand, I think it is very important to say that that is not a substitute for a strong defense voting record. I heard several people attacking the President the other day and Vice President Cheney in particular, saying that Vice President Cheney had a poor voting record on defense and that Senator Kerry had a good voting record on defense. So what I did was go to the Almanac of American Politics, which puts together a series of ratings on Congressmen and Senators. It is done by the National Journal. It is considered to be nonpartisan. It is considered to have a great deal of credibility. They give people ratings by groups that they think are good, honest brokers of where you stand in particular areas.

For example, I have, I think, a fairly low AFL-CIO rating. Other Members of Congress have a high rating. That rating is in the National Journal, where people can open it up and see my rating. Senator Kerry also has a rating from the American Security Council. He has a rating that was given at the same time that he was in the Senate that the Vice President, RICHARD CHENEY, was in the House of Representatives, and in which a real barometer for being a good, strong defense Democrat, Sam Nunn of Georgia, was in the Senate. I looked at this rating. The rating at the time when they were all three in Congress, Vice President Cheney, at that time Congressman CHENEY, had a 100 percent American Security Council rating for being strong on national defense as reported by the Almanac of American Politics. Sam Nunn, Democrat from Georgia, had a 100 percent rating for being strong on national defense under the American Security Council rating system as reported in the Almanac of American Politics put out by National Journal. Senator Kerry had a zero for a national defense voting record as rated by the American Security Council, as reported by the National Journal's Almanac of American Politics. Once again Vice President Cheney, 100 percent in votes in support of a strong national defense. Sam Nunn, Democrat from Georgia, 100 percent for a strong national defense. Senator JOHN KERRY, zero.

I do not think we should continue to debate ad nauseam Senator Kerry's record with respect to Vietnam. I think his words when he testified to the Senate and said that American servicemen had murdered 200,000 people, I think he should be accountable for that. I think he should be accountable for the statement when he said that 80 percent of them were stoned on pot 24 hours a day and that they ravaged the country like Genghis Khan. But I do not think that we should ad nauseam debate his service. We should, though, debate his voting record and whether that voting record portends well for the United States of America in terms of a strong national security should he become President of the United States. I think that we ought to go to the record, we ought to get off this who shot JOHN and who is bad and who is good and who served and who did not, but go to the voting record and analyze who would be best in terms of making a strong national security apparatus for our country. In my estimation, that is not Senator Kerry.

43. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005 -- (House of Representatives - June 16, 2004)

At the end of the bill, before the short title, insert the following new section:

Sec. . None of the funds provided under this Act may be used for the salaries and expenses of any employee for the expenditure of any fee collected under Section 315(f) of the Department of the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 1996 (as contained in Section 101(c) of Public Law 104-134) for the costs, in whole or in part, of the biological monitoring for a species that is included in a list published under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1533(c)), or that is a candidate for inclusion in such a list.

Mr. HUNTER (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the RECORD.

The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mr. Thornberry). Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, if one drives out beyond the population centers in California, they will come to the great California desert that lies between the coastal range and the Colorado River and vast areas of sand dunes, and that is a place where literally hundreds of thousands of Californians go to get away from the boss, to take the family for a weekend, to have a good time and to be able to off-road with their four-wheel-drive vehicles and their sand rails and dune buggies; and we have got places out there where families have gone for generations, where under one Palos Verde tree a family may have camped for 30 or 40 or 50 years, and it is a great getaway spot for Americans.

This land is BLM land, and recently the BLM has tripled user fees for the folks that use this territory, for the families that go out there and recreate. And that amounts, Mr. Chairman, to about 30 bucks a weekend. They go out and before they can buy groceries or charcoal or anything to use for their camping, they are going to have to fork out over $30 to Uncle Sam ostensibly for improvements in this BLM recreational facility. In fact, the BLM advertises it in one of their national publications, ``The Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area''; and they talk about these windblown sands of an ancient lakecrest which is one of the premier off-road vehicle playgrounds in the United States.

What this advertisement does not tell us is that the BLM has decided to use, having tripled the user fees for these off-roaders, a lot of folks having trouble coming up with that extra money to pay for a weekend, they have tripled the user fees, and they are using now almost a billion bucks of these user fees for monitoring studies which are used in an attempt by a number of groups to try to close down the dunes.

When we passed this pilot program for user fees, we never envisioned that this money would be used for monitoring studies for endangered species that would be used to try to inhibit the use of this great public land that is so valued by many Americans. It is within driving distance of about 10 percent of America's population.

So my amendment says very simply that we cannot use these user fees. We have to use them for what they were designed for and stated to be designed for, which is improving this recreational resource and not for doing biological studies which in the end are used by a number of groups in an attempt to close down the usage of this public area.

So my amendment would restrict that type of usage, and right now it is proposed by BLM that they take $1 million out of this fund, which is only about $3.8 million, and pull it way from using it to improve the resource and instead use it for monitoring; and my amendment would limit that.

44. 9/11 RECOMMENDATIONS IMPLEMENTATION ACT -- (House of Representatives - October 07, 2004)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, if you have friends or relatives or just people you care about who wear the uniform of the United States who are in war fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they are going out on a mission tonight or tomorrow and there are communications that affect that mission, directions from headquarters, plans, operations, those will probably go through your communications.

Now, these assurances of those secure communications reside in a little shop that is in what is known as the National Signals Agency. That is one of the agencies that Mr. Menendez's amendment would pull away from the Department of Defense. Now, that agency right now is responsible to the Secretary of Defense, to the uniformed personnel who run those military operations, whose people have their lives on the line and depend on those communications.

Can you imagine a military operation where the people that are running the operation, that is the U.S. military, do not have the resourcing and the control over their own communications line?

I remember one of the arguments that is going on right now is who shot down Yamamoto, and we still have an argument over which American pilot shot him down after we had broken their code and sent out a squad of aircraft to shoot down the leader of the Japanese Navy. That is because we broke their communications.

The security of communications is important as having a weapon that works. And inadvertently, Mr. Menendez's amendment pulls away and they probably do not even know this, so you cannot blame the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez) because he copied probably what somebody else in the other body put down, and they did not realize what they were doing. They have pulled away by definition from the Department of Defense and the uniformed people who serve this country the control over their own communication and the resourcing of their own communications. They pull that away in their bill.

Now, interestingly, the 9/11 reports says do not do that. It only has one small paragraph on that. I am turning to page 412. It says, ``The Department of Defense military intelligence programs, the joint military intelligence programs and the tactical intelligence programs will remain parts of the Department of Defense's responsibilities.''

That is one tiny paragraph, and yet because they missed that and they pulled this particular function away from the people that wear the uniform, they have committed a deadly mistake.

This amendment is full of deadly mistakes, deadly mistakes that the author does not even know about because he simply copied what somebody else put down.

Let me finally say, Mr. Chairman, that what we have serves this great partnership of the people that wear the uniform and the CIA. Let us maintain that partnership. Let us pass this bill without the amendment.

45. EXPRESSING SUPPORT AND APPRECIATION FOR THE PRESIDENT AND MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES PARTICIPATING IN OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM -- (Extensions of Remarks - March 31, 2003)

* Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, based on the misleading and erroneous statement made by the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. HOYER, I feel compelled to correct the record. In an effort to suggest inconsistencies in my historical support and commendation of the troops, Mr. HOYER stated that on December 13, 1995, I voted against a resolution regarding Armed Forces deployment to Bosnia that resolved, ``That the House of Representatives unequivocally supports the men and women of the United States Armed Forces who are carrying out their mission in support of peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina with professional excellence, dedicated patriotism, and exemplary bravery.'' However, a simple examination of the record tells a different story.

* What the gentleman from Maryland failed to note, is that on December 13, 1995, the House considered two competing resolutions on the deployment of the United States Armed Forces to Bosnia--House Resolution 302 sponsored by Mr. BUYER and House Resolution 306 sponsored by Mr. Hamilton. If the Hamilton resolution had consisted of only the resolved clause, which my colleague quoted, I would have supported it. However, H. Res. 306 was compiled mostly of whereas clauses that justified the deployment of our Armed Forces to the former Yugoslavia. Had my colleague thoroughly researched this, he might have noticed that, also on December 13, 1995, I opposed this deployment by voting for Mr. Dornan's bill, H.R. 2770, which would have prohibited federal funds from being used for peacekeeping operations or any implementation force in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

* I, instead, voted for the Buyer resolution, which expressed dissatisfaction with the President's policy of deployment and his disregard of the action taken by the House on two separate occasions to disallow the use of United States Armed Forces for these purposes. Nonetheless, this resolution also declared that the House of Representatives, ``..... is confident that the members of the United States Armed Forces, in whom it has the greatest pride and admiration, will perform their responsibilities with professional excellence, dedicated patriotism, and exemplary courage.......''

* Incidentally, the Buyer resolution passed the House by a vote of 287 to 141, with one voting present. The resolution Mr. HOYER criticized me for voting against, the Hamilton resolution, failed by a vote of 190 to 237, also with one voting present.

* It is truly unfortunate that Mr. HOYER made such a misleading statement and questioned my unfailing dedication to the young men and women of our Armed Forces.