Floor Speech

September 10, 2007

 

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I appreciate all the comments of my colleague. He had some very interesting things to say. I don't believe I can let it pass, as vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, without clarifying some of what has been said about the danger to this country.

 

   First, we have never taken our eyes, our efforts off getting the leaders of al-Qaida. There were times in the past, in the nineties, when we had an opportunity to get him, and apparently, according to published reports, from one of the people who was with Osama bin Laden, we came close, but we have not been able to find him. I can assure you, without going into the details, that we continue to make a major effort to find Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 man. If any Senator wants to come to the Senate Intelligence Committee in Hart 219, we will be happy to brief them on the efforts made there.

 

   As far as the threat to the United States, the greatest threat to the United States from abroad is having al-Qaida establish a safe haven where they can recruit, have training facilities, issue command-and-control orders, and develop weapons of mass destruction. We have no better authorities than Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri that they still seek to establish that headquarters for their effort in Iraq because this is where they believe their caliphate should be headquartered. They would be far more capable of operating against the United States and others if they could go back to establishing their safe havens in Iraq, as they had in Afghanistan prior to our eliminating the Taliban.

 

   I believe anybody will tell you that this country is safer because we have denied them a safe haven. Yes, some of the leaders are hiding out in the rugged mountains in that region. Their communications are very difficult. Their training facilities have been interrupted from time to time by our and allied efforts. We continue those efforts. They know they cannot operate safely there with impunity, but they are denied the operational freedom of a safe haven in Iraq. That is their goal--that and attacking the United States. Establishing a foothold in Iraq would give them not only the training facilities and recruiting and command-and-control capacities, but it would give them access to tremendous oil reserves, so they would have the funding from the oil resources, potentially putting tremendous economic pressure on us if they cut off Iraq's oil supply to the free world. But they would have the oil resources.

 

   As far as Iraq is concerned, the intelligence we had before we went in was not good. We pointed out in the Intelligence Committees where it fell short. But we have also had the report of the Iraqi Survey Group, David Kay, which said Iraq was a far more dangerous place even than we knew. Before we went in and took out Saddam Hussein, we did not know the chaotic system in that country. The fact that there were terror groups operating in that country who sought weapons of mass destruction--and we know Saddam Hussein not only manufactured but used weapons of mass destruction--those terrorist groups in Iraq were seeking to get weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein's operations and his just-in-time inventory system.

 

   There is a lot more to the story than we just heard, but I can assure my colleagues, from the intelligence standpoint, we are not giving anybody any safe haven where we have any reasonable knowledge of where they stand or in what way they are operating.

 

   I wanted to make those comments. I thank the Chair. I note another colleague has asked to speak.

 

   I yield the floor.