Dan Burton: “That is great. I am glad he did. But the point is we have got a similar situation today, and they do not want a vote of…”

“That is great. I am glad he did. But the point is we have got a similar situation today, and they do not want a vote of the Congress of the United States. Why? Why is it that it was important back then and it is not important now? We are going to be taking young Americans' lives and putting them at risk in Kosovo in a ground war, in a mountainous area that is not like what we faced in the Persian Gulf. The fact of the matter is that the Congress of the United States and the American people need to be on board if we are going to send our troops into harm's way in a ground war. They have said that they would need as many as 300,000 troops if we had to go in there. Do Members want to commit them without the people's voice being heard through their elected representatives? I think not. We need proper planning. Let me just say one more thing to my colleague. When Mr. Tudjman in Croatia killed 10,000 people and ran 750,000 out of that country with an ethnic cleansing, what did this body do? What did we say? Not a darned thing. But now we are talking about possibly giving this man unilateral authority to send in ground troops in Kosovo. It is an insane policy. The American people ought to be heard through the people they elect in this House and in the other body. It is no different, Mr. Chairman, than it was in 1991 when we went into the Persian Gulf. They insisted on a vote then, and I insist on a vote now.”