Message from the Senate
MESSAGE FROM THE SENATE
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Mr. CLYBURN. I thank Mr. Murtha for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, last Saturday I visited the Johnson VA Medical Center in Charleston, South Carolina. That medical center is named for a young man who is the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor because just out of high school he went off to fight in Vietnam and he threw himself on a grenade to save the others in the foxhole with him.
I went to the hospital last Saturday to visit one of my heroes, Joseph Henry Washington. Joseph Washington was on the USS Arizona on that fateful day at Pearl Harbor. I went because I wanted to report to Joseph Henry Washington on my recent trip to Iraq because he questioned the wisdom of my going there.
I said to Joe that I was very pleased with what I had found militarily in Iraq. I told him that I thought that our military forces were doing an admirable job, and I thought they were meeting with significant success.
But I said to him, Uncle Joe, I am very, very disappointed in what I have found on the domestic front. We are not going to win the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq until we can give them a police force that believes and is committed to law and order, not one that is 80 percent corrupt.
I said to him that I did not think that we were going to be successful in Iraq until we involved the Iraqi people in the reconstruction efforts. We see $9 billion that we can't account for. We see construction going on up in the northern part of the country. But in Baghdad, in and around that part of the country, we see a failed policy. That is what is causing the problem in Iraq. We must begin to involve the Iraqi people in the reconstruction of their country.
Eighty-five percent of the country is without electricity. Almost 60 percent of the country is without drinking water. We are never going to be successful until we tackle these problems, and that is where we are failing because there is no accountability on the domestic front in Iraq.
Mr. Speaker, I go back to Charleston the day after tomorrow because we are going to bury Uncle Joe. He stayed alive long enough for me to make my report to him. And for over 45 years in my consultations with him, he never wanted to talk about his experiences on the USS Arizona or his experiences after returning home. Why? Because he was never sufficiently included in the building of this great Nation. And the people of Iraq are not being sufficiently included in the rebuilding of their country. Until we do that, we will never be successful with this policy.
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