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Mr President. Phew! Issues in any of our political career have had the human power that the decision that we are called upon to make tonight and tomorrow does. In the last few weeks, I have had an opportunity to visit with many of the people most directly affected by the decision that we will make.

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Five weeks ago, I was at Herbert Air Force Base in northwest Florida. This is the based center for the Air Force Special Operations. Many families in that community have a loved one. Deployed into Saudi Arabia. I met with the spouses and Children of several of those families and heard the distress, the pain of the separation and the uncertain.

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Three weeks ago with the majority leader and others of our colleagues, I had the opportunity to visit Saudi Arabia and to visit in the desert with some of our troops, young men and young women of great courage and bravery. Well equipped, well prepared, Well, that ready to assume any responsibility.

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But they were clearly young men and women who had a high degree of anxiety about what they would be called upon to do and what the consequences would be. One young man who I happened to meet as he was digging out a bunker in a complex of tents, called up to me and indicated that he was from Florida, in fact, had been a student at the University of Florida.

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He greeted me with the gold Gator statement. This young man from Clearwater, Florida, told me that he had dropped out of school in order to join the Army, both in terms of maturing himself for life and economically preparing himself better to continue his education. Now he was prepared to make a sacrifice for the nation beyond that, which he probably contemplated when he enlisted.

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And finally, Mr President, Just last Sunday, I was in Tallahassee preparation for the events of the inauguration of our former colleague, Lawton Child's as governor of Florida. And the lady that I've known for over 20 years came up to me and I could tell she was upset.

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I asked her if we could step into a step into a private room to talk, and she broke down. She told me that her youngest son, her second son, had now been called to Saudi Arabia to join an older brother who was already there on the U.

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S s Saratoga is a sailor. Her youngest son is now going to be in Saudi Arabia as an infantry man based close to the Kuwait line. And she wanted to know, Are they going to kill my boy? Mr. President, we don't get asked questions like that very often in the issues that we are called upon to decide.

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I cite these personal examples to indicate the depth of humanity, the depth of personal feeling that America has invested in this issue. Therefore, it makes the responsibility each of us hold on especially solemn and one in which we must try to bring the full strength of our personal experience and our capacity at judgment to bear.

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In doing so, Mr President, I have felt that the present needed to be evaluated in the context of the past and the future. It's almost in the way that Charles Dickens helped explain the true meaning of Christmas present bye. Elaborating the significance of Christmases that had passed and Christmases which might come in the future, I think the past of this, which I will define, is that which occurred prior to the invasion of Kuwait is unfortunately characterized by a failure of strategic vision.

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Some very basic things are occurring in this region of the world, to which we have not been appropriately attentive just to cite three an emerging fundamentalism not just religious fundamentalism but cultural fundamentals. The rejection of Western values and this movement of fundamentalism is especially troublesome as it has attracted such a large number of younger people throughout this region.

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The enormous disparity between rich and poor, which are fueling basic animosities, and the fact that in part through the United States participation the Middle East has become the parking lot for the military weapons of the world. We end up with a relatively small nation of 15 million people with a 1.3 million army with 5700 tanks and over 700 combat aircraft, enormous disproportion of military strength to any credible need for those weapons.

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We make a basic mistake. I suggest, Mr President, if we think that what we are dealing with is one man, Saddam Hussein, I see Saddam Hussein not as the cause of those fundamental events, but rather as the guy lawful person who has taken advantage of those and other fundamental factors occurring in this region.

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We also domestically have contributed to the past. We have accommodated Iraq over a period of more than a decade, accommodated in terms of covertly assisting them in the war with Iran, within the shadow of the invasion of Kuwait, continuing to extend substantial economic assistance to Iraq.

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We also have contributed to the past by our failure to have a sustained commitment to a rational national energy policy failure which has made us increasingly hostage to the circumstances in the Middle East and the personalities of today's and tomorrow's Saddam Hussein. Looking to the future.

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I would suggest that as we attempt to assess how we should respond to the current crisis today, that we should ask ourselves, what do we want to have some of the consequences not just of the next 30 or 60 days, but over the next decade in this region?

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And what do they say about US policy around the world in this new post Cold War era? First, I would suggest that it is imperative that we developed some new national security arrange. They may not be and will not be precisely what NATO has been in Europe for the last 45 years.

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But I believe the NATO example, one of the most successful political military alliances in the history of Western civilization has some instructive lessons. Some of those include the fact that there was a predetermined allocation of responsibility, a predetermined basis upon which those responsibilities would be financed.

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NATO did not run the danger of having a United States secretary of the Treasury, with a tin cup arriving at the capitals of the various member nations attempting to solicit funds for an engagement that was already underway. Those decisions were made before not after the conflict began.

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We need to have a thoughtful security arrangement for the new post Cold War era. Second, within our own constitutional system, we need to re examine the relationships between the President and the Congress. I'm not going to have a debate today on whether a declaration of war is required in these circumstances.

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I happen to think it is. But I think the reality of the circumstance in which we find ourselves tonight is that any effective participation of Congress as the representatives of the people in shaping policy has been rendered formality by the occurrences of the last several months, at least since November 8, when the level of U.

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S military in the region moved from a defensive to an offensive posture. When our capacity to sustain that level of military became stretched, when our ability to have a rational rotation policy was terminated effectively, we were on a path accelerated by a United Nations resolution with the January 15th date that has led us an extra Lee to where we are tonight.

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I believe that we need to re examine this relationship between the executive and the Congress, and I would suggest attempt as a Congress to play a role of strategic advisor setting forth in advance what are going to be the standards which the United States will consider its vital interest to have been affected and where those vital interests justify the sacrifice of American lives for their protection.

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That decision should be made prior to not after or during a crisis, as it is being done now. Third, that we need to play an even more constructive role in bringing peace with dignity and respect into a region. Uh, which for since biblical times, has been wracked with war and hatred and dissension an extremely difficult task, a task that has eluded man over the millenniums, but one to which we must, in the aftermath of this crisis, recommit ourselves.

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We must also look for how we can play a more effective role in eliminating or moderating mitigating these enormous economic disparities which, as long as they exist, are going to be fueling discontent and creating the tender for a Middle Eastern populist demagogue to inflame. And finally, in brief summary of just some of the items that will be on the post crisis agenda, an enormous conflict is on the horizon over natural resources in this region, particularly water here in the United States.

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And my judgment play particularly important role in applying some of its technological capabilities as well as its political good offices to try to shape a controversy before it becomes the core of yet another set of conflicts in this region. With that said about the past and the future, Mr President, I would like to talk about today.

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This has been a rollercoaster week. I have heard that phrase applied by others, and I will adopt it a week ago with several colleagues, including Senator Nunn, Senator Levin, Senator Boren. Others I participate in some of the early drafts of the Mitchell none resolution, which is now before us.

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I think it is a very constructive contribution to the debate and to the resolution of this process. It set out some important principles, one of which was that the nation is committed to the proposition. Deciding Hussein's aggression will not be allowed to stand. That, I think, is a message which whatever surface division, maybe read into the debate of the last several days, there should be no misunderstanding that the nation is united behind that principle, that his aggression will not be rewarded, that we authorize the use of force in three specific important areas.

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That we stated that we felt that diplomacy and economic sanctions were the wisest course and should be pursued, but recognize the possibility that they might not be able to accomplish our objectives and therefore set up an expedited procedure which the president could ask for authority to commit American force to the removal of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

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At least two significant events have occurred since last Thursday and Friday. One of those events occurred on Tuesday the president requested the authority to use force. I have been asking the president to make such a request for several weeks upon our return from Saudi Arabia on the 20th of December, when with colleagues I met with the president when it was my opportunity to make some comments, I use my time to emphasize the importance that I attached to the president going to the nation and explaining why United States vital interests at stake and then as the conclusion of that education, the American people asking their representatives for authority to commit force.

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I am very pleased that the president has done so, and the second significant thing occurred a few hours later on Wednesday with the breakdown of the meeting between the United States secretary of state and the Iraqi foreign minister. Not only did that tend to crush optimism that diplomacy could be the means by which we would achieve our objectives because the discussions failed, but the style of failure was so dispiriting it would have been hard to have scripted the press conference of Foreign Minister Aziz in a way more calculated two in flame, uh, to raise fundamental questions as to intelligence and value and sensitivity among the international community, and particularly among the citizens of our country than the performance that he gave Wednesday night in Geneva.

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It raised basic questions as to whether diplomacy could reach our objective and whether the economic sanctions we're having their intended effect of moving Iraq towards a policy of greater openness. And now this rollercoaster week, we come to the end. The end, unfortunately, is going to be marked with sharp difference, I say.

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Unfortunately, there are some positive signs. Clearly, it is a strength of our democracy that we can have the kind of debate that we have experienced since Wednesday. There are few places in the world which would have the consideration of war and peace so openly and with such passion debating that is a great strength of our system.

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However, Mr President, I regret that I believe that the conclusion of this process we're going to have a very divided Congress matter of a handful of votes here and in the House of Representatives will determine which course of action the Congress will permit. Uh huh. I believe that that narrow division is not going to contribute to the sense of unity of the nation to the strength of the message to Saddam Hussein, nor to the capacity of the president.

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Should he assume the role of commander in chief to effectively carry out his responsibility, then my hope and I have spent some time over the last two days towards this end that we might be able to shape a position that would not command unanimous support. That's impossible, but would command a sufficiently large majority that we could say yes, there is a unity within the nation for a course of action.

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I still have faint hopes that that might happen, but I fear that our choices are going to be those that are before us in the two resolutions. Mr President, with that said, uh, I'm going to support the resolution which will give the president United States the authority to use force.

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I'm going to do so because I believe that the president United States deserves to have a presumption of correctness of his actions and that he especially deserves to have a presumption of a correctness as it relates to matters of our national security and relations with other nations.

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I'm reluctant to draw Universal conclusions from a short visit to the Middle East, But that reluctance will be overcoming to this extent. But I came away with a sense that this was an extremely complex fabric of interrelated and divergent issues factors, personalities, history, culture that we were dealing with in this crisis.

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It is not just the simple issue of a large and powerful state invading, pillaging, occupying a week neighbors, and that the president or the institution of the presidency was in the best position to integrate and evaluate, assess options implications of those options, uh, and reach a judgment which was in the national interest.

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Although frankly, there are some events which have caused me concern about the institution of the presidency, such as the failure to go effectively to the American people over the last several months, as Franklin Roosevelt did in the months before World War Two, and explain why we were about to undergo this very bloody a war.

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I still believe that the president continues to warrant our support, and I am prepared to invest my confidence in the judgment of the president. Mr. President, I hope the decision that we will make will be a wise I pray that the actions that we take will contribute to peace.

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Peace for the two sons of that mother in Tallahassee contribute to world peace for the sons and grandsons of that mother in Tallahassee. So that we will be able to discharge our responsibility to our creator for peace on Earth and that we can hope for a world without mother's tears.

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Thanks. Yeah.