Mr. Speaker, let me thank the able and distinguished chairman the gentleman from New York [Mr. Gilman] for yielding me this time, but more importantly, for bringing this very significant legislation to the floor today [House Congress Resolution 137].
 In light of what is going on in Iraq at this moment, this could not be a more timely resolution.  Once again, Saddam Hussein is showing his true colors as a ruthless dictator who will attempt to do anything to manipulate his way out of sanctions and weapons monitoring through whatever means he can.
 Mr. Speaker, I grew up in an era characterized, unfortunately, by ruthless dictators--Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin--individuals who committed crimes of unspeakable horror against their own people, against their minorities.  And the regime in Iraq is identical to the types that were run in Nazi Germany, in Fascist Italy, and in Communist Soviet Union under Stalin.
 We must stop Saddam Hussein now.  We must isolate him and make certain that the world understands the nature of his ruthless regime.  We must make certain that Saddam Hussein and every one of his henchmen are indicted as war criminals and individuals who commit crimes against humanity.
 I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of this legislation to bring him to justice for the crimes he has committed against the Iraqi people and against the citizens of other countries whom he has harmed, including our own people.  The Kurdish people, the Marsh Arabs, the Assyrian minority, the members of the Iraqi National Congress, the Kuwaiti prisoners of war, these are just a few of the victims of Saddam and his ruthless regime.
 Mr. Speaker, he has used chemical weapons against his own people.  In 1988, 8,000 Kurds were killed in Halabja by one poison gas attack using the chemical agent sarin that he had produced.  Now we are in Iraq trying to determine where he keeps those supplies and of an even worse nerve agent, VX, that just like sarin can kill people the way he killed Iraqi Kurds in Halabja--mercilessly and indiscriminately.
 He has waged ecological war against his own people, the Marsh Arabs.  He has tortured, murdered, and kidnapped to maintain power.  Saddam Hussein has clearly committed, in my judgment, crimes against humanity, crimes against the peace, and gross breaches of humanitarian law.  If there is any individual in the world who deserves to be brought to justice today, it is Saddam Hussein.
 I would commend this resolution to my colleagues and urge all of them to join me in sending a strong message to Saddam Hussein and the international community that the United States has not forgotten his crimes, that we hold him accountable for these abuses, and we demand justice for his victims.
 Mr. Speaker, on the steps of the Capitol right now there are people, Kurds, who are starving themselves.  They are I believe 25 days into a hunger strike to free Leyla Zana, a the first Kurdish woman elected to the Turkish Parliament in 1991.  She came to the United States in 1993 to testify about human rights abuses against the Kurdish minority in her country, testified before a standing committee of Congress and before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, went home, was then stripped of her office by her government, placed in jail, tried for what is equivalent to treason, and given a 15-year sentence for merely speaking her mind and testifying before the United States Congress.
 Turkey and Iraq together at this moment, Mr. Speaker, are attacking the Kurds in northern Iraq.  Turkey has come across the line with tens of thousands of their elite troops, using napalm and cluster bombs against the Kurdish minority that has fled their country.  Iraq is joining in on the other side.  Both are persecuting the Kurds at this moment.  Each of the countries in which the Kurds exist as a minority, in Turkey, in Iraq, in Iran, in Syria, each one of them oppresses that minority.  Each one of them calls the Kurdish people, who would seek only basic human rights, terrorists, when they are only protecting themselves from oppression.
 Mr. Speaker, the oppression must end.  The Kurds are not terrorists.  There may be some who believe they have no other way out, but the Kurdish people are not terrorists.  They are people simply seeking their rights, their rights against the Turkish Government, their rights against the Iranian Government, their rights against the Syrian Government, and their rights against the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.
 It is the governments who oppress them that are the terrorists.  It is the governments who deny them their basic human rights, deny them respect and standing in their communities, kill them and their children on a daily basis, attempt to drive them out of their societies--those are the true terrorists, Mr. Speaker.
 The chief among them is Saddam Hussein, whose regime responds to nothing, not to public pressure, not to resolutions from the Security Council.  It is time that we isolate this regime.  It is time that we declare Saddam Hussein to be what he is, a person who commits crimes against humanity that all of us abhor.  It is time that we indict him and try him and remove him from power, and that we return Iraq to a State that can live in the world community at peace with its neighbors and stop this murderous, ruthless dictatorial regime from further oppressing its people and threatening its neighbors.

(The following is in response to Congressman Paul from Texas, who stated that the United States' policy for human rights is inconsistent, as we support regimes who abuse their citizens, such as China and Indonesia, while condemning similar human rights abuses in Iraq.  In addition, the U.S. does not have the authority to be the "policeman of the world," Mr. Paul stated, referring to the U.S. attempts at changing other nations' human rights policies).

 Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to say to the gentleman who just finished speaking that I certainly respect the consistency of his ideas, but I disagree.  If he had expressed those ideas as a member of the parliament in Turkey or if he expressed them in Iraq or in Indonesia, he might well find himself in the same situation as Leyla Zana and the Kurdish parliamentarians found themselves and, that is, behind bars.  It seems to me that if we do not recognize that we are our brothers' and sisters' keeper, that our freedoms and their are in some way connected, we will invite the kind of terrorism that Saddam Hussein practices on his people and others practice on their people throughout this world.
 Let me agree with him, however, in part.  Let us stop giving money to the Turks as long as they repress their people.  Let us stop giving money to the Indonesian Government that takes away the religious freedoms of the people of East Timor.  Let us stop supporting dictators that deny the basic human rights of their people.
 I believe that we attempt very strongly to be consistent.  We passed nine bills dealing with China.  Those bills do have a potential, particularly the one on Radio Free Asia that will broadcast to China and Tibet and North Korea and Burma.  I think we have a potential for positively impacting their society.
 Let us never give up our ideals and our beliefs in human freedom, the very foundation of this society, because we might see a little inconsistency or cannot find the exact words we want to give us authority.  The authority is moral authority, and it has a great power in this world if only we will exercise it.