Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 6  Num. 66
             ======================================
                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")

REMARKS ON BOSNIA TROOP DEPLOYMENT

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham] is recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan]. I do not think there is anybody on the floor who knows history, accurately, as my friend from California.

Mr. Speaker, why is it so important, the time of the Field of Blackbirds, the time the Turks took over the Serbian Empire? What significance does that have for us, today, Mr. Speaker? From 1389, June 28 to June 28 in 1989, kind of the start of the problems we have in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in former Yugoslavia, because on June 28, 1989, Slobodan Milosevic, remember he is the Serbian out of Belgrade, spoke to national Yugoslavia and spoke about a former and a greater Yugoslavia.

Now let me back up just a little bit in time, Mr. Speaker, from going from 1389 to 1989 in the history when this was significant to both the Croatians and the Serbians, when Serbia was taken over by the Ottoman Turks. During World War II, and this is prior to Pearl Harbor in 1941, Germans attacked and invaded Yugoslavia itself. The Serbians united with Russia and the United States. Let me repeat that. The Serbians united with Russia and the United States.

There were two primary groups that fought with the United States and with Russia. They were the Chetniks, led by Micholevic, that were interested in a greater Yugoslavia; and then there was Tito, who was a Russian Communist, who was there to promote primarily Russian communism; two factions, but all fighting against the Nazis.

The Croatians and most of the Moslems fought with the Ustase in support of Nazi Germany. Germany built a concentration camp at Janocevic and killed 1.5 million Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies. During the 1980's Croatian nationalism movement under Tudjman, and the Croatians adopted, and this is now back at 1980, you can imagine the concern of most of the Serbians and some of the Moslems when the Croatians donned the old uniforms of Nazi Germany in the nationalistic movement which Tudjman was pushing on the other side of the Serb nationalistic movement, and the fears came to fruition.

[...]

Mr. DORNAN. Sure. What I am saying is that if people running for President think the President, to restate what I said earlier, can send any number of troops, unless it is Reagan and it is a Senate Democratic majority--then he is limited to 55 human beings--but whether it is Woodrow Wilson, he got a declaration of war; Roosevelt got a declaration of war. But whether it is Harry Truman in Korea, Kennedy or Johnson in Vietnam, Nixon claimed he had a secret plan which he did not, Presidents cannot, unless it is an emergency like Grenada, an American officer like Roberto Paz killed by a war criminal Turillos in Panama, unless there is an emergency nature, and I am for repealing the War Powers Act to give the President that emergency power, but Presidents do not arbitrarily have the raw, naked power alone, whether it is a future President or Clinton, to say, no matter what the House does, I want a vote but I want it to be a positive vote.

[TIME: 2000]

I was against Mr. Bush when he took that attitude. I noticed in today's paper Bush and Ford and Colin Powell endorse this unlimited raw executive power to send any number of troops they want anywhere in the world under a whim, which is the way Clinton started in this 2 years ago, to commit 25,000 people without a hearing, without talking to Congress, not to go to Bosnia, to only go in as hired guns to withdraw the U.N. Force which was being kidnapped, chained to tactical targets, having their boots stolen, slapped around, abused and degraded in the name of this tri-cornered civil war.

I did a show with Chris Mathews, who was Tip O'Neill's, while he was Speaker, main political consultant for, I think, 6 or 8 of Tip's 10 years. Chris said to me, `I think you do have the power to stop this. I think if you are against it, you should use your vote,' and he is the one who reminded me how Tip stopped Reagan dead in the water, so if the troops are not there yet, we do not even sign the treaty until December 14, today is the 6th, 8 days from now, and the first Armored man will not be there for several weeks right before Christmas, why can we not have a vote expressing our displeasure?

Now, going over this with scholars from Congressional Research Service, I am told disapproval cannot be vetoed by the President under separation of powers, because we control the appropriations process, and if we were a little bit earlier and there were not so much contention about a 7-year balanced budget plan, we could have stood up with a negative amendment on the defense appropriations bill and simply said, `Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment at the desk. The amendment will be read. No moneys appropriated under this bill shall be used to send or fund any ground,' I would have put the word `ground' in, `ground troops in Bosnia-Hercegovina.' That means the people can go to Macedonia, they can go to Croatia, they can go into Serbia and hold Milosevic's war criminal hand, they can go all up and the Dalmatian Coast, fill the Adriatic, the entire Mediterranean Sixth Fleet, no money for ground troops in Bosnia, because it is a European job.

Before you continue your history lecture there, let me tell you what one of the guards who served in Desert Storm, one of our great policemen who protects us here said in the elevator tonight to me. He said, `When I last looked, I don't think there were three nations in NATO, so three people each put up 20,000 troops.' He said, `What is there, 15?' I said Iceland, 16. They have no forces. They are very lucky. They give us good air bases and seaports in Iceland. I said, that is right, there are 15 nations. It is not all according to population or to military forces that we flesh this thing out.

Here is something that was handed to me today. You have been tracking Chechnya, English Chechnya. Colonel General--what is a Colonel General, three-star, yes, three-star, Colonel General, Leonty Shevtsov, Chief of Staff of the Russian forces in Chechnya from December 1994 to April of 1995, has now become the commander of the Russian peacekeeping forces to be placed in the American sector in Bosnia.

How ironic, the Russian military acting as peacekeepers in Bosnia when they themselves are still committing atrocities in Chechnya against the Muslims. Some 40,000 civilians died in Chechnya on Shevtsov's watch, and the killing goes on. Russian bombs continue to fall on Chechnyan villages. Women and children continue to die. American silence is unconscionable.

Here is my question for the night, Duke. The Democratic majority under Tip O'Neill and the majority leader Foley, without the U.S. Senate, it was still in Senate hands and had been so for 4 years, in the fifth year of Ronald Reagan delivering the Senate in January of 1981 to the Republican Party without the Senate, Tip O'Neill held commander in chief Ronald Reagan, beloved by military men and women around the world, a beloved figure with his ratings high, held him in the struggle for freedom in El Salvador for 55, not 5,500 or 550, less than five dozen people. Fifty-five advisors in a country north of the Panama Canal, and Reagan could not break Tip O'Neill and Foley and Gephardt; he was held to 55.

Now I am being told by a guy I admire, leader Bob Dole, by our best, one of our best fighters here, Newt Gingrich, and most of the leadership that we are neutered, impotent, that there is nothing we can do to stop Clinton, who avoided service three times and sent high school kids in his place; that he is going to put 55,000 people into what Churchill called the tinder box of the Balkans, disregarding two overwhelming House votes and a big Senate vote against it. He is going to get that done, and we are told we cannot do a thing about it; and Reagan could not get a 56th soldier or Green Beret into El Salvador.

Here is what I am going to do later. See this book, Presidential War Power, by a Democrat scholar named Louis Fisher. Pretty nonpartisan actually, although he is a registered Democrat, and here is his article that I am going to put in the Record, because McCain has been misstating this.

McCain said during Haiti that Thomas Jefferson sent naval forces to get the Barbary pirates along the Algerian coast without congressional approval; he said it over Haiti, and he said it again on Brinkley this Sunday.

That is just not so. John had better come up with his history. He did not learn that at Annapolis. The Barbary wars are no legal precedent for Haiti.

[TIME: 2145]

Do you know what? Ten public laws were passed by the Congress, 10 went into law, demanding that Jefferson, the first one was passed the day before he was sworn in on March 3d, 1801; they demanded he go do something about the Barbary pirates. The President, Jefferson himself, actually that is who Buchanan was quoting, eternal vigilance is the price you pay for liberty, and then I will turn it back.

Do you know what Jefferson said? I can do nothing as commander in chief except defend this country. If I am going to do anything offensive, particularly overseas, I must have the permission of Congress, just as every NATO nation has to get permission from their Knesset, their Parliament, the Bundestag; and we are not being listened to by Clinton.

I did not know, following Bosnia so closely and fighting the budget battle, that Clinton had thrown his support behind the Spanish Foreign Minister Javier Salano for Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This gentleman is not only a Marxist and whose only slogan when they took over in September 1979 was the platform of `We are a Marxist party,' and that is it, big friend of Castro, constantly hammering on us to take the sanctions off that Communist killer, and he says he has openly admitted opposing Spain's membership in NATO, now he runs the thing and Spain is not a full member in full standing to NATO, although on my chart here Spain is going to send into that area--oh, that is great--1,000 people. Wonderful. They will probably all go to Zagreb or someplace that is safe.

He says he has never distinguished himself as an ally of the United States. Again all the friendships with Fidel `Killer' Castro.

It says Spain is not a full member. It is preposterous to even think about considering someone to run an organization who is from a government that is not fully integrated into the military structure of NATO.

Clinton is making a monumental blunder of sending these troops into Bosnia under the guise of NATO.

I found out in briefings today, I do not remember whether you were there or not, Duke, that when we pull out in a year, and Britain and France have threatened to pull out and so did Germany if we pull out, it goes back to U.N. control.

So the U.N. is kind of going like under a rock. Their 14,000 people are going to go back to New York or wherever until a year goes by. Then they are all going to come back to the biggest U.N. operation ever.

I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."

See also: http://www.GrapevineNews.com/swsn/