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The Speaker pro tempore (Mr. Hare): Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) will control the remaining 12 minutes.

Mr. King of Iowa: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that, and I appreciate the gentleman from Tennessee for organizing this special order tonight. As I had the privilege to sit here on the floor and listen to each of the speakers, it was a good education for me to listen to the eloquent voices that stand up so well and speak for defending our freedom.

To take us towards the to the point towards conclusion of this hour, it is hard to pick up on that tone that was left by Mr. Franks of Arizona, the understanding of over 6,000 casualties on that first day. I presume that they were those killed in action on that day, and on D- Day landing on Omaha Beach and on Utah Beach and on other points there in Europe. That is a place and a location that will always live in the history of this country. It is a place of glory. It is a place where freedom was begun to spread back across Europe.

As I look at that, and I see these 60-some years hence the D-Day landing, I can't help but think that those countries in Europe that have experienced freedom the longest seems to hang on to that freedom the least, and those countries in Europe, particularly eastern Europe, that have lived under tyranny the most recently, seem to want to grasp that freedom and hang on to it and fight for it and defend it more aggressively.

That is reflected, I think, in the troops that are part of our coalition troops in Iraq. In one of my trips over there, I found myself standing with a British general down in Basra. I looked around his headquarters there, and I exempt the Brits from that definition, because they have been tenacious and stood with us in Iraq and other places around the world, but as I looked around, the uniforms and the national flags that were on the shoulders of the coalition groups, Great Britain there, Australia there, Romanians there, there were Danish soldiers there, Bulgarian soldiers there, as I recall, and the list went on.

If I remember right, it was eight different countries represented at those headquarters. I just gathered them together at random, lined them up and stood there and had their picture taken so that I could go back and reference which countries were represented.

But it surely appeared to me that the nations that had lived most recently behind the iron curtain, the one that had the least experience with freedom, were the ones that were the most likely to be there serving with and defending us and defending the freedoms of the people of Iraq and helping with the liberation that is there. That does not take away from the commitments that we have seen on the part of the British, and especially the Australians. They will let me know always that they have been with us in every war, and sometimes they beat us there. So I count them among our best friends and our best allies.

But here we are, with a debate that is going on continually here on the floor of this Congress. The questions that come to mind, as I listen to this discussion, I have to ask this question, what do liberals think? What are they thinking about? How can they draw a conclusion that somehow, even though Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, and that al Qaeda has streamed into Iraq to fight us there, in a way, a lot like the bug light. It is attractive, millions of them have been killed. They were captured and taken out on the field of battle there in Iraq. I would a lot rather have it there than here, and so would the American people.

But how can one argue that the war against terror is not in Iraq, it is anywhere else where they might be. We listened to the gentleman from Tennessee go through a long place of places around the world where the Islamic terrorists have attacked, a lot of times, free people. With that list, you have to know that this is a global war. These jihadists are attacking people, not like them, and their belief that they could expand, they should expand the caliphate at least around Western Europe and to the United States and presumably to the rest of the world, how can one conclude then that you would take a place off the map that has been paid for with the blood of American patriots, coalition force patriots and the blood of Iraqis, and the treasure, and say we are going to give it up.

We have liberated it. We have earned it, we have paid for it, and, now, we are going to give it up and hand it over to the terrorists because the war on terror is not in Iraq, even though Osama bin Laden believed it was there, and al Zarqawi believed it was there and al Zawahiri believes it is there.

It is obvious, General Petraeus has told us over and other again, that's where the central front is. In fact, Speaker Pelosi conceded that same point in one of her remarks here in a failed attempt to override one of the President's vetoes on one of their unconstitutional appropriations bills, but Iraq is the central front in the war on terror.

To argue that we should pull out of there and let that country become whatever it would become, and that would be the off limits, safe ground and territory for al Qaeda to set up shop, because, politically, it was a good argument to make.

All right, I can't follow that rationale, I can't follow that. If it is logical, someone has got to explain that to me. So we have a liberal approach to this. It is a law enforcement problem. Yes, we should go after Osama bin Laden in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we should do that.

But we can fight this war on many fronts. We are a nation that can do that. Before this is over, we will have to do it in many places simultaneously. But we dare not walk away from this country that we pitched our future with. It was the right decision to go in there. I regret we had to.

The President didn't have a choice, and honest historians will write that into the history books. But if we should walk away from there now, under any kind of ruse or under any kind of an excuse, they will claim victory, and, you would see, not just sectarian violence and the devastating bloodshed that would come from that until such time a dictator emerges, it can rule that part of the world, that's not the worst of things. It is a bad thing, but it's not the worst of things.

What I believe you would see happen is the Sunni triangle would become the haven for the al Qaeda terrorists. They would set up shop there, unchallenged. We wouldn't have a way to go in and challenge them, because if we're not willing to take them out and keep them out of there now, why would we ever have the will to go in and take them out later. You know that the price would be higher, but the will wouldn't be materialized.

So I believe al Qaeda takes over the Sunni triangle, and that would be the base of their operations, and they would seek to expand that base of operations. But, worse than that, as you have right now, you have Iranians fighting a proxy war against the United States in Iraq, and in Afghanistan.

In fact, the motion to recommit with instructions that Mr. Pence offered today illustrated how Iran is engaging themselves into the operations and in the support of the Taliban and Afghanistan. But they have been engaged in this proxy war against the United States in Iraq for 2½ or perhaps 3 years.

So if we were to pull out of there, you would see the hegemony of the Iranians go into the Shi'a regions and the influence of that, get entrenched further in the Shi'a regions of Iraq. Those regions control 70 to 80 percent of Iraq's oil. That would put Iran in control of the oil in that region, and the Strait of Hormuz, through which 42.6 percent of the world's export oil supply flows.

They would be in a position to decide when their treasure chest is full of oil money, when they have purchased enough scientists and enough nuclear capability and when they have developed enough delivery capability to terrorize the rest of the world and attack the rest of the world with their nuclear capability, pick their time, shut down or shut off, I call it the valve at the Strait of Hormuz, the place where the oil has to flow through. Through that strait, they can control the economy of the world.

If that valve is shut down, that sends the United States, the effect of the cost of our oil price is going through the roof, $3 a gallon gas would be cheap if that would happen. That would put the United States into at least a recession, probably a depression.

China would follow us. They are starved for the energy the same way, and their economy is linked to ours. If we catch a cold, they sneeze, because they sell so much product to us. The biggest losers in this would be the United States, China. The biggest winners, Iran in their hegemony; and the Russians who have more oil than they know what to do with.

That's why Putin is opposed to our operations there, and that's why we are getting a lot of grief out of Putin. This outfit over here says somehow says we shouldn't fight this in Iraq. The worst scenarios are the ones that I have talked about, and I anticipate a nuclear Iran, an Iran that is committed to annihilating Israel, and an Iran that is committed to annihilating the United States.

That's the rationale that we are dealing with here. I wonder if they can actually think through this. But I also wonder why anyone would think that the voters have hired 535 liberal generals to micromanage a global war on terror. In fact, I'd ask anyone in this Chamber, come down, and I will yield time to you, and you tell me, name me a single general that was a liberal, a successful liberal general throughout all the history of the world.

I defy you to name one, there isn't one. One has never existed. One will never exist. Liberal generals don't succeed, 535 micromanaging liberal generals certainly don't succeed. It's not Congress' business to micro manage war. It's our job to fund them and support them and equip our troops, field an Army and a Navy, and declare a war if the situation calls for it. We haven't done so since World War II.

That's our job in this Congress, and that's our constitutional limitations. We need to live by those limitations and not be busting our buttons believing that we can do something here that isn't getting done, maybe, to the satisfaction of the people on that side of the aisle or mine, for that matter.

But there is a tremendous amount at stake, and it is more than the lives that have been invested so far, those that have been lost so far. God bless them for that. Zach Wamp spoke well to that, but the destiny of America and the destiny of the free world and the destiny of western civilization are all on the line matched up against a belief that they are going to restore a caliphate and renew a 100 year-old conflict that has been taking place here in the war, here in the world for hundreds of years.

We have a western civilization belief, we believe in freedom, this has been a country that has been founded on Judeo-Christian principles. That's some of the foundation of our strength, free enterprise market economy is another one, belief in the rule of law, and the foundational principles that we have in this Constitution, all tied together, all at risk, all matched up against people that don't believe in freedom, people that believe in death, people that execute homosexuals and female adulteresses, by the way.

Many people on this side of the aisle have a different belief system. I don't know why they would want to ally themselves with the interests of those who want to restore the caliphate, stone women and execute homosexuals and destroy your freedom and your freedom of religion. All of that is tied up in the risk of this.