proud temporary on this day sign nancy pelosi speaker of the house of representatives pursuant to the order of the house on january fourth two thousand and seven the chair i want to recognize members from list submitted by the majority in the minority leaders for morning hour debate the chair will alternate recognition between the parties with each party limited to thirty minutes in each member other than a majority minority leaders and the minority whip limited to five minutes the chair recognizes the gentleman from florida mr stern general good morning madam speaker my colleagues are control of information is critical to national security this asset was compromised as reported in the london times p story the washington post recently last week was compromised from a cyber attack against the department of defense unclassified e mail system which included the e mail accounts of defense secretary robert gates while the pentagon does not have sufficient proof to formally make an accusation china is a prime suspect the responsibility is unclear because china is home to many insecure computers and networks that hackers  other countries could use to simply disguise their locations and launch these attacks making proper attribution difficult the chinese government replied quote it has always opposed any internet wrecking crime including hacking and crackdown on it according to their law this is not true last june was not the first cyber attack against tac that points back towards china  two thousand and five a group with ties to china compromised secure networks from the redstone arsenal military base to nasa to the world bank in one case the hackers stole flight planning software from the army the files they have obtained are not classified but many are strategically important enough to require u s government licenses for foreign use experts know china's military has openly discussed using cyber attacks as a means of defeating a more powerful conventional military such as ours in fact other governments have also been the targets of these vicious cyber attacks on a den of fide officials in germany in britain reported to the media that government and military networks had been broken into by hackers backed by the chinese army the guardian reported the chinese attackers launched online assaults on the network in britain's parliament the foreign office and defense ministry and my colleague last month the german weekly to spiegel also reported computers at the chancellery and three men a street have been infected with so called trojan horse programs which allowed an attacker to spy on information in those computers the report which appears on the eve of german chancellor merkel's visit to beijing said germany's domestic intelligence agency believe hackers associated with the chinese army might have been behind the attacks motives for such hacking may range from the stealing of secrets or confidential or confidential technology to probing for system weaknesses and placing hidden viruses that could be activated in case of a conflict the reported pentagon attack was a most flagrant and brave to date said alex nel an expert on the chinese military at london's royal united states institute quoted by the british newspaper the guardian nale said such attacks began at least four years ago and are increasing at an alarming rate now this anshul threat to the security of the united states and its allies in january january two thousand and five japanese officials had reported the chinese hackers were routinely attacking web sites and internet services according to the korean information security agency a total of ten thousand six hundred twenty eight cases of hacking were reported in the first half of the year two thousand and four thirty times higher than for the same period in two thousand and three and two thousand and five chinese  south korean government computers gaining access to information concerning the country's national assembly atomic energy research institute democratic progressive party and even the a ten or ary of south korean president himself whether or not cyber attacks or government sponsored china has become a growing focus of global any hacking efforts in a report earlier this year security software maker sam attack corporation list china as having the world's second largest amount of malicious computer activity experts say attacks originating in china often employ standard weapon three such as trojan horses and worms and many other sophisticated techniques in some cases hackers slip in after launching viruses to distract monitors or coordinate multiple tax for maximum effect china denies backing such attacks and foreign governments have declined to openly accuse beijing yet after the threatening test of the chinese anti satellite weapon the reports of further illustrations of china's pursuit of new methods of unconventional strategy chinese military thinking and frequently debate the strategies including the use of attacks on satellites financial system and computer networks quote in the information age the influence exerted by a nuclear bomb is perhaps less than the influence exerted by a hacker and quote a pair of chinese colonels wrote in a key nine hundred ninety nine work on asymmetrical strategies titled unlimited warfare a short while before the arm services and foreign affairs committee of the house of representatives and the case that's going to be made is that there has been just enough progress to warrant staying the course  in iraq well not august sixth i was in iraq and what i learned from that visit that day was that in fact that the president's surge has failed and that there is no end in sight for the war in iraq i learned that first by talking with the deputy prime minister of iraq that day who said that the night before the allow a former prize prime minister ayad alawi had pulled his people out of the parliament and the week before the sunni's had left and then what was remaining of the parliament was on vacation and he said that there wasn't going to be any political settlement by this september nor would there be by next september and he didn't say which september point of that is the reason for the surge was promoted by the president and by general petraeus as creating the space for political settlements in iraq which have not only not happened but we've even seen steps backwards but what's really important today is that people examine the so called evidence that the that that progress has been made and that's why i brought a few charts here the first one says is there really less violence in iraq let's look at what is counted but even more importantly what isn't counted in the evidence that progress has been made not counted includes shiite and shiite violence which is happening in the south in the b area sunni and sunni violence car bombings aren't counted and get this one this isn't a joke people shot in the front of the head are not counted people shot in the back of the head are counted i thought at first that that was just an exaggerated joke it's true and finally the large scale bombing like the one that killed five hundred ethnic use it is in in august is not counted so clearly these numbers are very clearly cherry picked and then if you look at a fact that is important to many americans every month in two thousand seven including the month of the surge has seen more u s military casualties than the same month in two thousand and six now the words more and more of our young men are dying and while the parliament was on vacation as some commentator said because after all it's so hot about one hundred twenty degrees our young men and women and we're fighting and dying in their body armor and helmets and heavy packs and  weapons out in that hundred twenty degree heat dying at numbers greater than ever and of course not included in those numbers has been not only the number of u s troops that have died but the dollars that have been spent these are the dollars that we know about right now per year not overall in the war but per year one hundred twenty million dollars per month ten million actually i've heard twelve million is the new number per day two million not true week over two million per day three hundred twenty nine thousand per hour we're doing this for an hour right now almost fourteen million dollars an hour and over two hundred twenty eight thousand was two hundred twenty nine thousand dollars a minute is being spent in iraq and yet the political reconciliation which was the goal of expanding the numbers of troops that we have in iraq has not achieved that that it's actually gone gone backwards and so right now i think what we're seeing is a dog and pony show and the good news is that a lot of people unlike the lead up to the war in the first place aren't buying  it the front page of usa today record sixty percent of americans seek a date for a pullout public wary of report on iraq polls show and there have been many other reports the madam speaker the troop surge in iraq has clearly failed it has failed to achieve its purpose the troop surge has failed not because of our troops but because of the failures of politicians here in washington and in iraq this president's surge has been as successful as a president's boast to catch osama bin laden dead or alive we now have three reports from entities at least somewhat independent from the bush propaganda machine that confirm the obvious the national intelligence estimate providing the thinking of the intelligence community that instead of getting better the situation in iraq is getting worse will get worse quote the iraqi government will become more precarious over the next six to twelve months the independent commission on security forces concluded that the iraqi interior ministry is quote dysfunctional it's so bad that it can't be fixed they recommend that it be disbanded the government accountability office of value awaited the surge and it judge president bush's policy with a clear after a clear failure a fiasco a fatal flop with only three of eighteen benchmarks having been met today general cite whatever selective statistics that his political bosses may permit him to disclose but the facts are that each and every month this year has involved more deaths of american troops than each month including august last year and despite the ethnic cleansing that has already this placed three and a half million iraqis the increasing violence continues to inflict increasingly deadly toll on iraq e families what's life like for those iraqis who survive almost half are in less than a dollar a day seventy percent lack access to adequate water and one third remain and dire need of emergency food aid when the surge was announced the white house said whitelist summer and as the summer approached the white house said why don't september well now that this much overrated september is here and i cry why till next year the only real mystery about president bush's september decision has been what new excuse he would offer to justify staying the same old deadly course and as the american people as seen through the diplomacy of each and every other excuse the president has returned to his original ploy nine eleven coincidently just as we received this report on the anniversary of nine eleven he claims that quote the same folks that are bombing in iraq are the ones who attacked us in america on september the eleventh that is false and he knows it's false but fear with deception is all he has left to rationalize the pain of the many the sacrifice of the brave and the loss of three billion dollars every single week as usual this president dead certain and dead wrong what seeks is war without limits war without end under his direction general petraeus and ambassador crocker propose a war that continues for probably another decade the george bush trillion dollar fifteen year war now congress must respond to the press since propaganda surge with a true surge with a memory surge reminding america of the repeated false cries of progress and phony excuses that have only brought our families more insecurity congress must learn from the courage continually displayed by our troops appeasement will not stop the wrongheaded administration policies more blank checks will only during our national treasury while fueling more death and destruction that only endangers american families and so today we note the surge has failed but we respectfully and sincerely thank general petraeus and all of our troops who serve america and are doing their jobs but we know we must do our job it is long past time for congress to act our