Sam Gejdenson: “what we will take up today is a bill that will cripple America and endanger American military personnel as they have…”

“what we will take up today is a bill that will cripple America and endanger American military personnel as they have never been endangered before. The bill should be retitled. It should be called the Saddam Hussein Full-Protection Act, because if this piece of legislation that we address today was in place, George Bush could not have pulled the world community together to stop Saddam Hussein's aggression. But worse than that, in the future it will make every conflict an American conflict. It will make every casualty an American casualty. It will mean every dollar of every conflict will be an American taxpayer dollar. In the Persian Gulf, 90 percent of the money that that war cost was paid for by other participants, not American taxpayers. It was a world responsibility. What this legislation will do will cripple the Presidency, leaving him either with the choice of unilateral American action or no action at all. Defeat this legislation. It endangers our national security.”