Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, for a moment let me build on something the distinguished Senator from Michigan said talking about our troops. Having been on the Senate Armed Services Committee and having been chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness for a number of years, I have had a chance to talk to troops all over the world in all kinds of circumstances. Never have I seen such a commitment as is out there right now by these young troops.

I remember not long ago I was at a hospital where they were sending injured from Afghanistan. Without exception, each one of the injured troops--some sailors, some marines, some airmen, some Army--all said they were anxious to get back to their units. One young lady, whose name was Stennis--I remember her name because she was on the USS Stennis--a young sailor, she who got tangled up in a refueling line. It pulled her off to a free fall all the way down into the ocean, crushing both of her lungs. She was a very small person. She made it. She lived. She was in the hospital. Her words were these: I want to get well to get back to my units, and I want to make a career out of the U.S. Navy.

When I look at our distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Warner, who was Secretary of the Navy, I can assure you we have never had sailors more committed than we have today. That is what is happening right now.

I am pleased we are beyond the point of talking about objections. There are three major objections that various individuals are trying to voice. One was: We cannot do anything without allies. We are glad to realize we have allies. We have some 45 nations supporting us in this effort to get rid of this terrorist, Saddam Hussein. But even if we weren't, we remember Grenada, Panama, we remember 1986 when Ronald Reagan was President and when Qadhafi had blown up a building, killing some of our soldiers. We did not have overflight permission, and President Reagan sent in F-111s and pounded Libya, and we have not heard from Qadhafi since.

The smoking gun argument, we all understand that what we are faced with, with Saddam Hussein--not Iraq, but Saddam Hussein--is an ability to do things that would not maybe kill 100 or 200 people but maybe a million people. Rich Butler, probably the most revered of the former weapons inspectors, said one warhead like they have in Iraq filled with 140 liters of VX gas could kill a million people. We have to reprogram ourselves and think in those terms.

f you did need a smoking gun--which we did not have to have--if you did, last night we learned there are smoking guns. He had denied he had the very missiles he sent over and used last night.

The last argument was there had to be a link with Osama bin Laden. We have to again reprogram ourselves because what we are dealing with now is a terrorist. This is not a war on Iraq, it is a liberation of the Iraqi people who have been oppressed and tortured for decades. There is a war involved. It is not a war on Iraq, it is a war against terrorism. This war was declared by our President at 8:30 in the evening on the fateful September 11. He said this is a war on terrorism. You go after the biggest terrorists.

A lot of people do not think of Saddam Hussein as a terrorist, but if you measure the severity of terrorism by the number of people someone has tortured or murdered, certainly no one can hold a candle to Saddam Hussein. In 1983, Human Rights

Watch and Amnesty International documented that he executed 8,000 of his own Kurdish citizens aged 13 and older. In 1985, it is reported they executed 315 children between the ages of 8 and 17. In 1988--we all remember this very well because that is when he set a record. We believe it is an all-time record that holds to this day. He murdered, in one day, 5,000 of his own citizens using a chemical that produces the most torturous kind of death, where your eyeballs are fried and your lungs are actually fried. There was mustard gas and other chemicals. That was in 1988. Then they talked about the 60 villages--Human Rights Watch--attacked with mustard gas. Women, children, it did not make any difference.

In 1990, Amnesty International listed 38 new methods of torture used by Saddam Hussein including mock execution, piercing of the hands with electric drills, electric shocks, sexual abuse, lowering the victims into baths of acid.

Then in 1999, at a peaceful demonstration, security forces fired into a crowd of protesters, killing hundreds of civilians, including women and children. In the year 2000, they were looking for a new way to punish those who might be suspected of saying something about Saddam Hussein. They had been sending them into prison, but the prisons were full, so the new method was to pull the tongue out and tear the tongue off.

In 1991, with a person I think very highly of, we made the first trip into Kuwait. It was so close after the war was over that they did not know the war was over and the fires were still going in the oil fields. The guns were still being fired. Alexander Haig, I, and a guy named Sauda Saba who was the Ambassador from Kuwait to the United States of America, we went in there to see what it was like. Sauda Saba had his 7-year-old daughter with him. He was of royalty. We went to their house where we found out that Saddam Hussein had used his house as one of the headquarters. We went through the house and found that the young 7-year-old girl's bedroom had been used as a torture chamber. We found body parts and hair stuck to the walls.

I don't believe there is a terrorist anywhere who could be more dangerous than Saddam Hussein. That is what this is all about. This is not a war on Iraq, it is the liberation of the people of Iraq. I honestly believe the dancing in the streets after Afghanistan will not hold a candle to the dancing in the streets we will see not just in Baghdad, but in all the oppressed surrounding nations.