contingencies with the need to push for a strategic bomber in the context of regional contingencies? With respect to SDI, the question that I would have wanted to raise is, what are the priorities of the program of SDI? How do you reconcile Brilliant Pebbles with the fact that the threat of the future, regional contingencies and the desire to develop regional missile defense, how do you handle regional missile defense versus strategic missile defense? But I will not ask those questions this morning. Mr. DELLUMS. Now, I want to come to a more sobering reality. The fact that we stand at an historic and significant moment because we are indeed at war in the Persian Gulf. I know that I say without fear of contradiction that all of my colleagues and I support our young men and women who are serving in the Persian Gulf. Most support the war, but I believe that many, if not most of my colleagues fear an escalation of the war in the Persian Gulf in all of its sobering and extraordinary consequences that could obtain. On Tuesday, President Bush in his press conference said to the Nation and the world, an air war may not be sufficient. Some of us have come to the conclusion, correct or mistaken, but the conclusion that the stage may very well now be set for major escalation. I believe that feeling, that foreboding, ominous feeling that Members have with respect to escalation has to have a voice. It has to be articulated. I would like to say to you, because we are leaving here, Members of Congress are not going to be here for the next 10 days, both of you are going on a long journey to return to brief the President, and I want to sit here and say to you in very direct terms, do not go forward with this escalation. Every single feeling that I have in my body is frightening, ominous, and foreboding, that to go forward with escalation may very well mean a cost in human terms that stagger the imagination. When I pause to consider the possibilities of the use of weapons of mass destruction, of chemicals, of maybe even nuclear weapons, it is frightening. I dare say that many in this room and many people around the country and in the world have shed a number of tears in the fear of the possibility of what escalation could bring and what I would simply communicate to you is that my great hope is that we do not escalate beyond this moment. One of the arguments that was made was that sanctions alone will not work. Well, we don't just have sanctions now. I would suggest that the American people, with all due respect, Mr. Secretary, not being enamored of these high-tech weapons, but I believe they should come to fear them, because when we look at what is happening in the Persian Gulf, we all have an opportunity to look through a small window of the future of war and it is frightening and dangerous. As many of us have been compelled to watch television day after day, night after night, for hours after hours after hours, many of us have contemplated, what would it be like if those weapons of destruction, those cruise missiles, highly accurate weapons, were striking Washington, D.C., or striking military targets like An drews Air Force Base or striking Oakland and Berkeley or Philadelphia or New York. It staggers the imagination. It is compelling that someone attempt to say that as we look at this highly technical capability of waging war, that war makes no sense in the future, that it is a frightening and disturbing thing. So I would like to summarize, there are a number of questions I want to raise over the course of the debate. I will try to raise them with as much intellect as I possibly can in my capacity as subcommittee Chair of R&D. But at this moment, I seize the opportunity to say, to try to give voice to the feeling that I think most of us in this room or certainly most of us have, and that is a fear of what the escalation of this war could possibly bring. I do not wish to see major, major casualties. I do not wish to see the use of weapons of mass destruction. That is not to say they would be initiated from this side. But what happens to our young people if they are placed in harm's way in that regard? I think this is a great moment to pause, to see if there is some other way than to move toward this ominous notion that would cost in human, financial, and environmental terms, such a high price tag that we may for eons in time in the future be paying a sobering cost for that. I thank you for your indulgence to make this comment. Secretary CHENEY. I wonder if I might, Mr. Chairman, just respond briefly. Mr. Dellums, we served together for 10 years in the House and I know your statement comes from the heart. I care very deeply about the Nation and about the war that we are now engaged in and about the costs that are involved, most especially for the folks out there. But I think it is appropriate to remind everyone that we did everything we could to avoid war, that we gave Saddam Hussein over 5 months to withdraw from Kuwait; that the situation was such that in the final analysis, he defied all diplomatic efforts, economic sanctions, U.N. resolutions, the Arab League, and insisted upon doing everything he could to obliterate a small, peaceful nation that was absolutely no threat to him when he took Kuwait. Now we have mounted military operations to end that illegal occupation of Kuwait. We believe that it is far better, and in the end that it will be far less costly, for the United States and our allies to deal with the threat that Saddam Hussein represents now, than it would have been to wait 5 or 6 or 10 years from now when he had weapons of mass destruction, when it would have been far more difficult. We are well aware of the responsibility we bear for the war. We know that it weighs very heavily on the mind of the President, certainly on General Powell and myself. Our mission to Saudi Arabia that begins today is specifically to go spend time with General Schwarzkopf, our commander, and his staff, to review the overall course of the war, to see what steps should come next, and to report back to the President. Our hope is that we can wrap it up as soon as possible, to minimize the loss of life on all sides. The war can end tomorrow if Saddam Hussein will get out of Kuwait. In the final analysis, it is his occupation of Kuwait that has precipitated this crisis. It will be his withdrawal from Kuwait, one way or the other, that will end it. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Schroeder. Mrs. SCHROEDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank both of you for being here and wish you godspeed on your trip. I would like to carry forward a little bit with some of the things that weren't quite finished yesterday in hearings on the Hill that I am concerned about. Number one, as you go on your trip, yesterday we heard an awful lot about the psychological warfare going on in the Kuwaiti theater in particular, and the Saudis seem to be very, very proud of the number of pamphlets they dropped. The ones that I saw on television showed the king welcoming people and so forth and so on. The first question I have is that for many of the people familiar with that region, they tend to think that-the tendency to surrender would be much greater to other Arabs than it would be to infidels or Westerners or whatever we are, and so that somehow to do-if the determination is made that the only way you are going to get them out is to go forward, somehow to hope that the psychological warfare has really had its effect, along with the air war, is there any way that our Arab allies might be in the front or do something-I think we ought to be thinking about that and maybe that is one of the things that could be talked about over there, because it was impressive, and it is a real question as to how will it best work or be carried out. Second, when Secretary Baker was up here yesterday, many Members were asking about, could we see the accounts. There is skepticism on the Hill that maybe some of these pledges, are we going to really see money follow those pledges? The last I heard, only Kuwait had totally paid their pledge, and you kind of think if Kuwait doesn't pay, we may as well give it all up. But I am sure between now and the supplemental, Congress is going to get more interested in whether or not these pledges are being paid. I understand the President's difficult role because he is trying to hold the alliance together so he can't be too vicious in being the debt collector. But I think there are a lot of us who volunteered up here to let the allies know that we were expecting the pledges to be paid, and we want to be very aggressive, but we kind of need to know the status of the account. So I guess my question on that would be, who is keeping the accounts? How do we keep up to date with those pledges, and is there any way we could do some routine reporting, maybe? Would there be a periodic reporting that the committee could get on that? My final question is that while I hear your plea on bases in Europe and structure in Europe, I still think we know we are going to have many fewer people in Europe. I hear from many of the dependents that have been left there without the service member, because the service member has been sent to Saudi Arabia, that first of all, they are a little frightened; the terrorism thing is rising, and as we saw on this morning's news, Europe seems to be much heavier threat than here, that they are worried and they see empty planes flying back from Saudi Arabia and they keep wondering why they can't come back. Their feeling is there are very few service members that are going to be sent back to Germany. They would just as soon start figuring on how they could come home and be wherever they are going to be at the next positioning. Isn't there some way we could start down-sizing the very expensive structure we have there? They call them facilities and it turns out to be a gas station or something. I really think we could certainly-no one is saying we pull out, but certainly we can do with a much lesser number and not nearly the detail that we have over there that has been very heavy for a long time. So those are three things that I had in my mind, and I thank you very much for being here to answer them. Secretary CHENEY. I will comment on a couple and then ask the General to comment about Germany and the troops and so forth. On the accounting, just to give you a couple of numbers to keep in mind, the total cost to the U.S. in terms of the incremental cost of Operation Desert Shield in calendar year 1990, which ended just a month ago, was a little over $11 billion. A little over $9 billion of that is covered by contributions from other countries and by direct host nation support. The status of the fund at present is, we have been authorized by Congress to take a billion dollars out of it, which we have done. There is a little over $5 billion cash on hand now. I can't get access to that until Congress passes legislation authorizing me to do that and appropriate it. That is our understanding, and that request will come up as part of the supplemental. With respect to calendar year 1991, the first quarter of 1991 that we are now in, we have pledges of $41 billion from our allies, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Japanese, the Germans and others, which will cover, I would guess, better than 75 percent, perhaps even better than 80 percent of the cost. The CHAIRMAN. Isn't that number 51? Secretary CHENEY. Fifty-one includes what they contributed last year. If you take the first quarter of this year, it is $41 billion. Mrs. SCHROEDER. But could we know how much is collected? Secretary CHENEY. Yes. We will be happy to provide that for the [The following information was received for the record:] TABLE 1 DESERT SHIELD: CY 1990 AND 1991 FOREIGN COMMITMENTS TO THE U.S. 1/ Defense, State, Treasury; - Defense 1/ Data compiled by OMB. Sources of data: Commitments - 2/ $1 billion has been released from the Defense Cooperation Account to Defense in accordance with the FY '91 Appropriations Act. 3/ An additional amount above the $2 billion is under discussion. 4/ Japan pledged $260 million to other coalition forces for total contributions of $2 billion. 5/ Under consideration by Diet. 6/ Korea pledged $15 million to other coalition forces for total contributions of $95 million. |