Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold on Focusing on the Fight Against Terrorism From the Senate Floor March 31, 2004 Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, yesterday the 9/11 Commission heard the public testimony of current and former Cabinet and National Security Council officials. It is critically important to make certain the historical record is accurate and complete and to establish all of the facts surrounding what the various elements of the U.S. Government knew about the terrorist threat before September 11, 2001. The most important task before us, our first priority, should be to stop future attacks, to crush the terrorist organizations that are trying to kill us and trying to kill our children. Over 2 1/2 years have passed since that horrible day. We are dutybound to get our post-September 11 response right, and I think getting it right means keeping this fight focused on the terrorist networks that attacked this Nation. Putting it more simply, it means keeping our eye on the ball. We need to take this fight to the terrorists. That is why every Member of this body voted to go after those responsible for attacking this country on September 11, 2001. But the further we get from September 11, I am concerned that we are not doing enough to root out the terrorists in Afghanistan. Recently, we have all heard a lot about the spring offensive in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. I support the offensive and I remain deeply grateful for the service of our men and women in uniform. But why is this offensive happening this spring? We are talking about forces that attacked this country in 2001. This offensive should have taken place last spring. In fact, by the end of last spring, Rand Beers, who had served as counterterrorism adviser to this administration in the National Security Council, had resigned his job and was voicing his concerns about the insufficient effort in Afghanistan. ``Terrorists move around the country with ease. We don't even know what is going on,'' he told a reporter. The director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University just found that ``the low level of funding for the reconstruction of Afghanistan remains astonishing, given the importance with which major nations claim to regard it and the consequences of the previous neglect of that country.'' When it comes to terrorists in Afghanistan, we need to finish the job and finish them off. Then we need to make sure that we support the Afghan people and help them create a climate in their country that will make it impossible for terrorist forces to survive there in the future. Make no mistake: The al-Qaida network is not confined only to Afghanistan. It would be misleading and dangerous to suggest that eliminating a handful of al-Qaida leaders eliminates the threat from the network. None of these al-Qaida forces should ever know a moment's peace. We must wage a relentless campaign against al-Qaida around the world, and we will not be done until they have nowhere left to hide. I joined my colleagues in authorizing the use of force against those responsible for the September 11 attacks. When I cast that vote, I expected a serious campaign targeting the terrorists who attacked this country. I am pretty confident most Americans expected the same thing. What we did not expect was that elements of that effort would be left to tread water so that we could focus resources on the war in Iraq instead. Instead of keeping our eye on the ball, instead of focusing on winning the fight we are in, this administration launched into a tremendously costly initiative in Iraq. Of course, they have used a whole lot of different arguments to justify this war, and a lot of arguments trying to link the war to the fight against terrorism, even though on January 8 of this year, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated he had not seen any ``smoking gun or concrete evidence'' of ties between former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Even though the report The Network of Terrorism, published by the State Department in the wake of 9/11, which begins with the words of the President of the United States, listed 45 countries where al-Qaida or affiliated groups were known to have operated--and guess what, Iraq was not one of the 45. Iraq was not on the list in the report. Even though Richard Clarke, the man whom the Bush administration chose to head up counterterrorism policy within the National Security Council, told the President and members of his Cabinet that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. By the summer of 2002, national security debates weren't about the fight against terrorism anymore; they were all about the invasion of Iraq. We got sidetracked. We are facing one of the most serious threats to our national security in the history of this country, and I dare anyone to say that is an exaggeration, but what did we do? We took our eye off the ball. As I said before, even as our brave troops were taking Baghdad, 10 men allegedly involved in the bombing of the USS Cole--a terrorist attack that killed 17 American sailors--escaped from a prison in Yemen. That news was disturbing, and I wanted answers, answers about what we knew about their escape, the circumstances of their detention and the security of the facility, about the implications of this lapse. The answers were of a deeply troubling ``no one is minding the store'' variety. I can assure you I tried again and again to get some information about this. This month, reports indicate these escapees have finally been recaptured. Of course this is good news. But we must take steps to avoid this kind of scenario in the future. We must give these issues the focus they deserve and devote resources and support to monitoring these situations closely and acting to protect our interests. As you know, by October 2003, even Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld indicated in a memo that, despite over 2 years having passed since September 11, ``relatively little effort'' had gone into developing ``a long range plan'' to win the fight against terrorism. In the memo of the Secretary of Defense, he pointed out that there is no consensus within the national security community in the U.S. about how to even measure success in this fight. No thoughtful and useful way to tell where we stand? So not only have we lost our focus in this fight, we don't even have a way to measure our lack of focus. This is our most important national security priority. Something is not right with this picture. Iraq is a mammoth undertaking. We only have so many national security resources, and all the resources we used to fight the war with Iraq--the military resources, the intelligence resources, the money, effort, and the long hours--all of them came from what is surely a finite supply. The fight against the terrorists who attacked this country had to be addressed with what was left, wedged into the margins. Jeffrey Record, visiting professor at the Army War College, published a paper that very clearly acknowledged this problem. His analysis indicated that the U.S. fight against terrorism has been ``strategically unfocused.'' He writes as follows: In the wake of the September 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the United States, the U.S. Government declared a global war on terrorism. The nature and parameters of that war, however, remain frustratingly unclear. The administration has postulated a multiplicity of enemies, including rogue states; weapons of mass destruction proliferators; terrorist organizations of global, regional, and national scope; and terrorism itself. It also seems to have conflated them into a monolithic threat, and in so doing has subordinated strategic clarity to the moral clarity it strives for in foreign policy and may have set the United States on a course of open-ended and gratuitous conflict with states and nonstate entities that posed no serious threat to the United States. Of particular concern has been the conflation of al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a single, undifferentiated terrorist threat. He continues: This was a strategic error of the first order because it ignored critical differences between the two in character, threat level, and susceptibility to U.S. deterrence and military action. The result has been an unnecessary preventive war of choice against a deterred Iraq that has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable al-Qaida. The war against Iraq was not integral to the [Global War on Terrorism], but rather a detour from it. Some have argued that Iraq itself is the central front in the fight against terrorism, despite the absence of significant evidence linking the Saddam Hussein regime to terrorists who attacked this country. They point to the indisputable fact that in post-Saddam Iraq, terrorists are operating in Iraq and they are targeting our brave American soldiers as well as innocent American and Iraqi and other civilians. This is a true statement. It is also a painful reality. But it is not a strategy for defeating al-Qaida. Just because there are attacks in Iraq does not mean there will not be attacks elsewhere. The terrorists working for and with the al-Qaida network will not all be attracted to Iraq. We can't bring them all in there and defeat them there. Right now, terror cells are plotting and planning and operating in many other places around the world--in the Middle East, in east Africa, in southeast Asia, in northern Africa, in central Asia. Pretending that a ``roach motel'' strategy against terrorist networks is a viable way to protect our national security would be almost laughable if the consequences were not so deadly serious. There are heartbreaking human costs to the families of killed and injured troops, and there are astronomical economic costs--costs that America is writing bad checks to cover--as well. And there is the cost we can never know or measure, the cost of missed opportunities to make progress in the fight against al-Qaida and associated terrorist networks. I am glad the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein is gone. I am glad the Iraqi people have a chance at a better life. I recognize it is not in our national interest to let Iraq dissolve into chaotic disorder, but my first priority is my concern for the American people, and I doubt our effort in Iraq has helped to eliminate the terrorist threat we face from the forces that actually attacked us on September 11. I also fear that the way the administration has approached Iraq--the blurring of facts, the conflating of villains, the shifting justifications for war--may undermine our capacity to lead the global fight against terrorism. As David Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq said on March 22, ``We are in grave danger of having destroyed our credibility internationally and domestically with regard to warning about future events.'' International credibility matters. It is part and parcel of our country's power--our power to inspire, to motivate, to persuade. Our enemies have a global network. We must have a global response. That means close cooperation with countries around the world. It means sharing intelligence, and coordinating with other countries to clamp down on terrorist financing, squeezing terrorist networks out of the shadows in which they operate, leaving them vulnerable and exposed. But since September 11, we have seen a loss of this critical American power. In fact, today, a majority of people living in Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey say they believe the U.S. is conducting its campaign against terror to dominate others and control the world's oil. Somehow the fight against terrorism, which was and should still be a rallying point for global unity and resolve, has become divisive. We know that the military plays a critical role in fighting terrorism. But some have twisted the importance of the military's role into an argument that suggests that fighting terrorism is about nothing but military force. I believe at best this is delusional and wildly dangerous at worst. Military force absolutely must be part of our response, and all of us in the Senate voted to give the President the authority to use it. And the vast resources available to DOD, which unfortunately do not always trickle down to the level of our men and women in the field, makes it tempting to turn to our Armed Forces for solutions again and again. But we all know this is true: The answers do not lie with the military alone--and it is not fair to our brave men and women in uniform to make them bear the brunt of conducting the fight against terrorism all by themselves. We must also take a hard look at all the other forms of power that America has at its disposal, strengthen those tools, and apply them wisely. Consider what a quick glance at the international section of daily newspapers tells us--uranium seizures at insecure borders, money laundering through the diamond trade that has been linked to terrorist financing, and pirates boarding chemical tankers, steering them for a while, and then disappearing. As the ranking member of the Subcommittee on African Affairs, I know that we do not have the intelligence resources that we should around the world. I know that we do not really have any policy at all to deal with Somalia, a failed state in which terrorists have operated and found sanctuary. I know that there is a great deal of work to be done to help countries in which we know terrorists have operated. We need to improve the basic capacities of border patrols who could stop wanted individuals, and customs agents who could help stop weapons proliferation and auditors who could freeze terrorist assets. And we can do more to root out the corruption that undermines these safeguards at every turn. In the wake of the terrible bombings in Madrid, my heart goes out to the people of Spain, and my judgment tells me that too many people are misinterpreting the subsequent Spanish election. I don't believe that the Spanish people will let their political choices be dictated to them by terrorists. The real lesson, the most important lesson that we can draw from recent events in Spain is this: A democracy cannot be unified and mobilized to fight terrorism when citizens believe that their government is willing to mislead them about the threats they face, and when they believe that their government does not have its eye on the ball. Americans know that the battle against terrorism is not a matter of choice, and they know that the battle is worth fighting fiercely. We will not run scared, and we will not be frightened into abandoning our most cherished national values or liberties. So let us move forward to harness the strength of this great country, to learn from our mistakes, to use all of the tools at our disposal, and to stay focused on the most important national security priority before us--fighting and defeating the forces that have attacked our country.

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