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Remarks by U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd

September 10, 2004

A Hollow Legacy to the Victims of September 11, 2001

U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., delivered the following remarks in the Senate Friday, marking the next day's third anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in the Pennsylvania field.  Byrd, the top Democratic member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has been highly critical of the Bush White House that talks a great deal about making America safer from attack while rejecting funds aimed at closing the gaps in our homeland security protections.

Tomorrow will be a day of painful remembrance for our nation.  The passage of time has done little to numb the anguish of that September morning three years ago when nineteen ruthless terrorists commandeered four commercial aircraft and transformed them into the stuff of nightmares.  The memories are still too raw, the images too vivid, the toll of human misery too overwhelming.

And so we remember, and in our remembrance pay homage to the victims and the heroes of 9/11.  But we owe more to those who perished on September 11, 2001, than merely remembrance.  And we owe more to the American people than merely paying lip service to their safety.

That is the primary reason that we are here today, debating the Homeland Security funding bill.  We are here because of the rescue workers who moved so quickly, so valiantly, to save lives, only to sacrifice their own.  We are here because of those thousands of men and women who, on that crystal clear morning of September 11 three years ago, were sitting at their desks, walking through the halls, doing their jobs, only to have such brutality abruptly end their lives.  We are here, Senators, because we can never forget that day, and because we never want to repeat its horrors. 

Congress has passed a blitz of legislation and appropriated billions of dollars over the past three years in response to the 9/11 attacks on America.  Congress overcame the objections of the President and created a new Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security.  With great fanfare and acclaim, we passed legislation to strengthen both port security and border security.  We have tightened airport security, turned our most prominent public buildings into barricaded fortresses, and acquiesced in the suspension of basic rights to privacy in the name of security.

And frankly, to little avail.  Today, three years out from the 9/11 attacks, we are living under the yoke of an "imminent" threat of future attacks.  Sectors of New York, New Jersey, and Washington are functioning under a heightened "orange alert" threat level while the rest of the nation perches uneasily under the umbrella of a yellow, or elevated, threat.  Security at virtually any major public event – from the political conventions to the Olympics – is oppressive.  We quake at the notion that the November elections might spark another devastating terrorist attack on the United States.

We can talk until we are blue in the face about all the steps we have taken to enhance security since 9/11, but the bottom line is this: Does anybody really feel safer and more secure than they did three years ago?

Much of the legislation that Congress has passed since 9/11 was envisioned as a legacy to those 3,000 men and women who lost their lives on that day three years ago.  Yet, I fear it is becoming a hollow legacy. Congress has been thwarted at every turn by a White House that spends lavishly on rhetoric yet demonstrates a pinch-purse mentality when it comes to delivering on its promises.  The Department of Homeland Security that we took such pains to create has been hamstrung from the outset by inadequate funding from the White House. Our port security and border security initiatives, so essential to fighting terrorism, are languishing for lack of money.   The people hear that their safety, their security, are the paramount priority of this White House, but then see the very same Administration play shell games with security funds.

Surely this is not the legacy we want to leave to the victims of 9/11.

The President crisscrosses the country claiming that he has made America safer.  Don't believe it.  He has signed legislation intended to protect our airplanes from hijackers.  The President has signed legislation designed to close the porous borders in our north and south.  The President has signed legislation to stop terrorists from slipping through our seaports.  But what he hasn't signed is the check. 

President Bush tells the country that we are safer because of him, but he has forced dangerous cuts to the Federal Air Marshal program.

The President tells Americans that they can rest easy because of him, but he has refused to approve funds that would help to prevent Madrid-style bombings at our train stations.

The President campaigns on an image of being tough on terrorists, but he has rejected effort after effort to invest critical dollars in police officers and firefighters.  It is as if the President wants our emergency responders to pay for homeland security with bake sales and bingo nights.  When it comes to protecting this nation, there should be no distinction between providing necessary resources for troops overseas and for first responders at home.

To continue this homeland security hoax pays little tribute to the victims of September 11, 2001.  To tell the American people that they are safe, when, in fact, they are not, honors few memories of those victims.  This White House has made an absolute sham of homeland security.

And yet there is more.  This President has staked his credibility and, to a large extent his presidency, on the assertion that the war in Iraq is an extension of the war on terror, despite the fact that no Iraqis were among the 9/11 hijackers and despite the fact that no credible evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden has ever been documented.

The President tells us over and over again that America is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power in Iraq, but he fails to mention that post-war Iraq has become the foremost breeding ground of anti-American terrorism on the globe.  He likes to talk to the troops, but he doesn't like to talk about the steadily mounting death toll in Iraq.

Despite the President's rose-colored view of Iraq, the number, and recently the rate, of American and Iraqi deaths and injuries are continuing to rise.  Iraq may be free of the yoke of Saddam Hussein, but it is not free of the yoke of violence.  As of this week, the death toll of American military personnel in Iraq has exceeded 1,000.  Unlike the mass casualties of 9/11, American military personnel in Iraq have died in relatively tiny clusters over the course of the past 18 months – one or two or five or seven at time.  In spite of the transfer of sovereignty in Iraq more than two months ago, fighting continues to rage on in that crippled country, and American casualties continue to mount.  The death toll of American military personnel in Iraq may not yet approach the death toll of civilians on 9/11, but it is no less significant and no less heartbreaking.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks on America may or may not have been preventable.  The missed intelligence cues, the missed communications, the "what ifs" will haunt us forever.  But the returns are already in on the war in Iraq.  The President took this country to war in Iraq for the wrong reasons based on faulty assumptions with unanticipated and deadly results for untold numbers of Americans. 

As we pause to remember the moments when the airplanes struck the World Trade Centers, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania field, we will remember the sacrifice of the  mothers and fathers, the husbands and wives, the brothers and sisters, the firefighters, the police officers, the ambulance drivers.  We will remember all of those who lost their lives in those tragic moments. And we will remember those who have been sent to battle in their name; against the terrorist forces of al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and, tragically, against what has become an enemy of our own making in Iraq. 

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