[Congressional Record: November 3, 2005 (House)]
[Page H9562-H9566]
MOTION TO GO TO CONFERENCE ON H.R. 2528, MILITARY QUALITY OF LIFE AND
VETERANS AFFAIRS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006
[...]
Motion To Instruct Offered by Mr. Obey
Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees.
The Clerk read as follows:
Mr. Obey moves that the managers on the part of the House
at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses
on the Senate amendments to the bill, H.R. 2528, be
instructed to insist on the House level to support force
protection activities in Iraq.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 7(b) of rule XXII, the
gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) and the gentleman from New York
(Mr. Walsh) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin.
Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 9 minutes.
Madam Speaker, let me say that this motion to instruct is, I think,
fairly straightforward and simple, although the context in which it is
offered is certainly not.
What this motion attempts to do is simply insist that the $50 million
contained in the House bill, but not contained in the Senate bill, for
the purpose of retrofitting existing facilities and constructing
special overhead cover devices to protect soldiers in bases throughout
Iraq, is maintained.
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That overhead cover system would provide protection from artillery,
rocket-propelled grenades and missile attack up to and including 122
millimeter rockets. That is virtually exactly what this does.
But let me, in the context of offering this proposal, make a few
observations. Even if this motion is adopted, and I would certainly
expect that it would be, I think that we still must face the fact that
our troops will not be adequately protected, nor will American citizens
abroad be adequately protected so long as our Government is still
taking actions which discredit this Nation and this Congress is
continuing to neglect its oversight responsibilities with respect to
those actions.
Let me give three examples. In 2003, it came to the Nation's
attention that the Secretary of Defense had established an operation
known as the Office of Special Programs, the primary purpose of which
was to vet intelligence and advise Pentagon leadership and the White
House on plans for invading Iraq. That office was staffed by a select
group handpicked by then Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith and
Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz.
It was charged with developing the rationale for invading Iraq, and
it was created out of a frustration on the part of the Vice President
and the Secretary of Defense and their allies within the
administration, their frustration that the normal intelligence
operations in our Government were not being ``sufficiently forward
leaning,'' as the Secretary of Defense put it, in finding weapons of
mass destruction and in building a case for going to war in Iraq.
The problem is that that office was established to provide
information outside of the normal channels, and it was even designed to
go around the Department of Defense's own intelligence operation unit.
The problem with that Office of Special Programs is that it relied on
so-called intelligence from like-minded true believers, primarily Ahmad
Chalabi and his allies in Iraq.
At the time, we asked that the Surveys and Investigations staff of
the Appropriations Committee look into this matter and determine what
the facts were surrounding the creation of this operation. We obtained
some support from the majority party but not sufficient support under
the rules of the House in order to allow that surveys and investigation
study to proceed, and so it never took place.
[[Page H9563]]
Second, earlier this year, the committee became aware of intelligence
actions that the Department of Defense was taking, actions of an under-
the-table nature, which a number of us felt were highly inappropriate
and highly dangerous, classified activities which cannot be discussed
in public.
We tried to offer language to assure that in the future such actions
would not be undertaken without proper notification to the Congress and
to this committee. The fact is that when I offered language to try to
do that, I received a phone call from Andy Card, the President's Staff
Chief, and in that phone call he told me that if I would withdraw that
language he would assure me that this matter would be worked out to the
satisfaction of both the executive and legislative branches.
In fact, while we have made some small progress in reaching an
understanding on this matter, there are still two very important issues
that have not been resolved, that the administration has not agreed to,
and they are key issues, including whether or not this Congress will be
informed of those activities in a timely fashion so that the
information provided to the Congress is, in fact, meaningful.
We are still being stonewalled on that matter, and the Congress
still, in my view, has not lived up to its oversight responsibilities
on that matter.
Now, yesterday, we see in the Washington Post a story which says CIA
holds terror suspects in secret prisons. It notes that close to $100
million evidently was spent to establish these secret compounds at
which detainees were evidently subjected to torture-related activities,
including water-boarding, and yet we are told that not a single member
of the Appropriations Committee and not a single member of the staff
have been told by the CIA that that had been going on.
This committee has an obligation to protect the power of the purse.
In my view, until we take action on this matter, we stand vulnerable to
the justifiable charge that Congress is ignoring its responsibilities
to protect taxpayers' money and to protect the reputation of the United
States internationally; And when we do that, we put at risk the very
troops that we are trying to protect through this motion this morning.
Madam Speaker, I would hope that this language would be supported by
the majority. But I would also hope that this Congress understands that
even if it is, we are failing our fundamental responsibility to the
American taxpayer if we do not exercise considerably more vigorously
than we have up to date our responsibilities to see to it that matters
related to Iraq are being handled in a manner which makes certain that
the Congress knows what is going on, and gives the Congress an
opportunity to try to make certain that what is going on is consistent
with American values.
That certainly is not the case when we see these kinds of horrific
headlines in the paper, and I would associate myself with the remarks
contained in the editorial in the Washington Post this morning.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record at this point the editorial
which makes clear that Congress has not in any way, shape or form lived
up to its responsibilities, and, in my view, they have enabled the
administration to continue to cover up its activities with respect to
Iraq, its activities with respect to manipulating intelligence, its
activities with respect to allowing agencies to engage in conduct not
at all consistent with American values or American interests.
[From the Washington Post, Nov. 3, 2005]
Rebellion Against Abuse
Last month a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay military base
excused himself from a conversation with his lawyer and
stepped into a cell, where he slashed his arm and hung
himself. This desperate attempted suicide by a detainee held
for four years without charge, trial or any clear prospect of
release was not isolated. At least 131 Guantanamo inmates
began a hunger strike on Aug. 8 to protest their indefinite
confinement, and more than two dozen are being kept alive
only by force-feeding. No wonder Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld has denied permission to U.N. human rights
investigators to meet with detainees at Guantanamo: Their
accounts would surely add to the discredit the United States
has earned for its lawless treatment of foreign prisoners.
Guantanamo, however, is not the worst problem. As The
Post's Dana Priest reported yesterday, the CIA maintains its
own network of secret prisons, into which 100 or more
terrorist suspects have ``disappeared'' as if they were
victims of a Third World dictatorship. Some of the 30 most
important prisoners are being held in secret facilities in
Eastern European countries--which should shame democratic
governments that only recently dismantled Soviet-era secret
police apparatuses. Held in dark underground cells, the
prisoners have no legal rights, no visitors from outside the
CIA and no checks on their treatment, even by the
International Red Cross. President Bush has authorized
interrogators to subject these men to ``cruel, inhuman and
degrading'' treatment that is illegal in the United States
and that is banned by a treaty ratified by the Senate. The
governments that allow the CIA prisons on their territory
violate this international law, if not their own laws.
This shameful situation is the direct result of Mr. Bush's
decision in February 2002 to set aside the Geneva Conventions
as well as standing U.S. regulations for the handling of
detainees. Under the Geneva Conventions, al Qaeda militants
could have been denied prisoner-of-war status and held
indefinitely; they could have been interrogated and tried,
either in U.S. courts or under the military system of
justice. At the same time they would have been protected by
Geneva from torture and other cruel treatment. Had Mr. Bush
followed that course, the abuse scandals at Guantanamo Bay
and in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the severe damage they have
caused to the United States, could have been averted. Key
authors of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, such as Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, could have been put on trial,
with their crimes exposed to the world.
Instead, not a single al Qaeda leader has been prosecuted
in the past four years. The Pentagon's system of hearings on
the status of Guantanamo detainees, introduced only after a
unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court, has no way of
resolving the long-term status of most detainees. The CIA has
no long-term plan for its secret prisoners, whom one agency
official described as ``a horrible burden.''
For some time a revolt against this disastrous policy has
been gathering steam inside the administration and in the
Senate; it is led by senators such as John McCain (R-Ariz.)
and by the same military officers and State Department
officials who opposed Mr. Bush's decision to disregard the
Geneva accords. Their opponents are a small group of civilian
political appointees circled around Mr. Rumsfeld and Vice
President Cheney. According to a report in the New York
Times, the military professionals want to restore Geneva's
protections against cruel treatment to the Pentagon's
official doctrine for handling detainees. Mr. McCain is
seeking to ban ``cruel, inhuman and degrading'' treatment for
all detainees held by the United States, including those in
the CIA's secret prisons.
There is no more important issue before the country or
Congress. Yet the advocates of decency and common sense seem
to have meager support from the Democratic Party. Senate
Democrats staged a legislative stunt on Tuesday intended to
reopen--once again--the debate on prewar intelligence about
Iraq. They have taken no such dramatic stand against the
CIA's abuses of foreign prisoners; on a conference committee
considering Mr. McCain's amendment, Democratic support has
been faltering. While Democrats grandstand about a war debate
that took place three years ago; the Bush administration's
champions of torture are quietly working to preserve policies
whose reversal ought to be an urgent priority.
Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. WALSH. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, addressing the substance of this motion, the House
included $50 million in the military quality of life bill for overhead
cover systems to support force protection in Iraq. This money provides
additional construction funds for protecting soldiers from indirect
fire attacks, such as mortars and rockets.
This funding, along with funding that was included in the
supplemental bill passed earlier this year for the same purpose,
provides the amount the Department of Defense says is needed for these
activities.
Unfortunately, the other body did not see fit to include these funds.
We still believe additional money is necessary, and we will go into
conference supporting the House position.
Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from
New Jersey (Mr. Holt).
Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I rise to support my colleague from Wisconsin
in his effort to shed some light on a large array of questions that are
before us.
This cover-up theme of the cover-up Congress is so pervasive, and it
is not just in this body, it seems to be in the other body. The other
body in fact recently took some rather extreme parliamentary measures
to force the issue, and some called it a gimmick. But it seemed to be
the only way to break
[[Page H9564]]
through this cover-up, to get answers to questions that we have in our
oversight role in the U.S. Congress, to provide a balance of power, to
be able to serve the American people as we need to do.
I, for example, have introduced resolutions requesting information
about the disclosure of identities of covert agents; and eight times in
eight votes here in the House of Representatives those resolutions have
been turned down in various committees. Eight times in eight separate
votes in various committees, these efforts to get the information that
we need in order to exert the oversight, to protect the men and women
that we have asked to do dangerous jobs around the world.
Of course, some things clearly have to be kept quiet for the sake of
the safety and effectiveness of our troops overseas and so forth. But
Congress has a very important oversight role under the Constitution;
and in order to exert that role, we need information.
I applaud the gentleman for doing all that he does to try to break
through this cover-up theme.
Mr. WALSH. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from
California (Mr. Waxman), the ranking member on the Government Reform
Committee.
Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the
time.
Mr. Speaker, my colleagues, one of the most important jobs for
Congress is not just to pass laws but to see how the laws are working.
We need to do oversight and to have investigations. The Constitution
envisioned we would do this when they had us as a separate branch, and
this is a way to provide the checks and balances that our Government
was supposed to have in order to avoid the concentration of power in
any one branch of Government.
We have an executive branch that wants to act as secretly as
possible. They do not want openness. They do not want transparency.
They do not even want to hear alternative points of view.
I believe that the President of the United States surrounds himself
with people who tell him exactly what he wants to hear, and the
Republicans who run the Congress are abetting that. They are helping
him avoid getting a full discussion of the issues when Congress does
not pursue oversight and investigations.
Now there are many things that this Congress has failed to do. They
have failed to look at the manipulation of intelligence by the
President and others working for him in the prelude to the war. We have
not had any hearings on that.
They have failed to look at the issues of how we are spending the
taxpayers' money on some of these contracts in Iraq, for Katrina and
others. They really are not doing the diligent job that needs to be
done.
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The Congress of the United States has even refused to look at and
find out why we were not given information from the executive branch
about the costs of the Medicaid prescription drug bill. A civil service
actuary in the administration was prohibited from giving Congress that
information. You would think that Democrats and Republicans would be
outraged. Yet the Republicans who run the Congress refuse to hold
hearings on this.
Oversight is very important, and it stands today in stark contrast to
the way they are behaving with the way the Republicans handled
oversight when President Clinton was in power. There was not an
accusation too small for them to ignore. They ran and called hearings.
They issued subpoenas. They brought people into a private room to take
depositions. The Congress of the United States held more days, I
believe it was over a week of public hearings, on whether President
Clinton misused his Christmas card list for political purpose. Yet we
cannot get them to hold a hearing on the manipulation of intelligence
to get us into a war.
I think that when a Congress does not do its oversight, in effect
what they are doing is covering things up. They are not letting the
American people know what its government is doing. This is not the
government of the Republican Party. This is not the government of
President Clinton. It is a government that belongs to the people of the
United States, and our democracy cannot work if there is no
accountability and transparency.
We have never heard of anyone in this administration fired for doing
a poor job. In fact, if they do a poor enough job, they get elevated.
They even get a Medal of Freedom award. No one was fired, no one was
held accountable for the failure to have accurate intelligence before
we went into the war. No one has been fired for anything that is been
done improperly by this administration. It is as if it did not happen.
I think the Republicans believe if you do not have oversight, no one
knows about the problem; therefore, the problem never existed. Well, I
think it is wrong. We have a responsibility and it is time that we
speak out loudly and clearly to insist that the Congress of the United
States live up to that responsibility.
Mr. Speaker, I support the motion of the gentleman.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, a moment ago I cited the Washington Post editorial which
appeared in the paper today. I would like to read just a portion of
that editorial. The editorial reads as follows:
``As The Post's Dana Priest reported yesterday, the CIA maintains its
own network of secret prisons into which 100 or more terrorist suspects
have `disappeared' as if they were victims of a Third World
dictatorship.''
When I see references to the disappeared, my mind goes back to
President Pinochet in Chile and the ``Disappeared'' under his regime.
And I wonder whether or not many Americans and many Members of this
Congress are comfortable with our White House being tossed into the
same terminology, into the same basket as the outrageous conduct of the
Chilean Government a number of years ago.
The editorial goes on to say that under the policies of the CIA with
respect to these institutions ``prisoners have no legal rights, no
visitors from outside the CIA, and no checks on their treatment, even
by the International Red Cross. . . . President Bush has authorized
interrogators to subject these men to `cruel, inhumane and degrading'
treatment that is illegal in the United States and that is banned by a
treaty ratified by the Senate. The governments that allow the CIA
prisons on their territory violate this international law, if not their
own laws.''
It then goes on to point out that despite all of this, ``not a single
al Qaeda leader has been prosecuted in the last 4 years.'' It then goes
on to say ``the CIA has no long-term plans for its secret prisoners
whom one agency official described as `a horrible burden.' ''
Then it notes that a congressional rebellion against this kind of
activity is being led in the Senate by Senator McCain and that his main
opponents are ``a small group of civilian political appointees circled
around Mr. Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney.''
The editorial then goes on to say, ``According to a report in the New
York Times, the military professionals want to restore Geneva's
protections against cruel treatment to the Pentagon official doctrine
for handling detainees. Mr. McCain is seeking to ban cruel, inhumane
and degrading treatment for all detainees held by the United States,
including those in the CIA secret prisons.''
So I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that in addition to passing this
motion today, this House needs to stand as one; every single Member of
this House ought to be willing to support the retention of the McCain
amendment on the defense appropriations bill. And I would hope that we
would see this House finally face up to its obligations on that score.
Mr. WALSH. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from
Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the distinguished ranking member of the Armed
Services Committee.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding. I rise in
support of the motion.
Mr. Speaker, I left the Armed Services Committee hearing a moment ago
and I heard Command Sergeant Major Citola in a very eloquent discussion
of the troops in Iraq say that we are a Nation of laws. It was
heartening to hear that. Then the report from The Washington Post to
which the gentleman from Wisconsin refers is a dagger in that thought.
[[Page H9565]]
Our men and women in uniform are serving with tremendous distinction
around the world in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, Korea,
Germany, and many other places; and they deserve the best protection
and support we can give them.
We in Congress are tasked with ensuring these troops and our veterans
have all they need. They deserve the very best. Part of our job comes
in providing them with the best equipment, training, and benefits.
Another part is providing oversight of the policies of the
administration. One of the questions that I had earlier was when the
Armed Services Committee did not adopt a subcommittee on oversight or
investigations.
Hearken back to the days when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, David Jones, raised the issue that the Joint Chiefs of Staff is
not working well and that there is a lack of jointness within our
military. It was the committee on investigations under the gentleman
from Alabama, Bill Nichols, that worked for some 4 years and came up
with the landmark law that we now call Goldwater-Nichols. That was
oversight.
By oversight, we must ensure that our military forces are employed
appropriately; when there are problems, that they are investigated
fairly and properly, as they were in Chairman Nichols' work.
I have supported calls for more vigorous investigations of the
failure in prewar intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and for a
likely post-war situation in Iraq. I have also supported a Truman-like
commission to look at contracting problems in Iraq. Unfortunately,
those efforts have not been undertaken; and they, sadly, fell on deaf
ears.
In my own Armed Services Committee there have been many efforts that
have been undertaken in a bipartisan manner. This is good. A noble
example is our joint effort to ensure that more up-armored Humvees and
other force protection equipment reached the field despite the failure
to plan adequately for their needs. That is a very positive step we
did. Yet even in our committee, we need to do better when it comes to
oversight in key areas of our policy relating to Iraq and the war on
terror. Notably, I feel there must be additional policy and additional
oversight of our treatment of detainees in theaters around the world.
The question I have, Mr. Speaker, in regard to the article to which
the gentleman from Wisconsin refers, was there any connection between
what the allegations are by the CIA and the Department of Defense or
anyone therein. That, I think, is a matter of oversight and one that we
need to at least have a briefing or a hearing thereon.
Increased oversight will allow us both to understand the systematic
causes of these cases of abuse, the right solutions to be enacted into
law. That is our job. The Constitution charges the Congress with
raising and maintaining the military; and you cannot raise and maintain
unless you oversight, unless you understand the problems that we can
cure by law. That is our job. And I think we could do a much, much
better job.
Mr. WALSH. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.
Mr. Speaker, in keeping with the spirit of this motion to instruct,
the purpose of which is to protect American troops, I want to simply
say that no matter how hard we try, we are going to have a difficult
time doing that unless we change some unpleasant facts on the ground in
Iraq. When more than 80 percent of Iraqis tell pollsters that they want
America to leave their country, when almost one-half of Iraqis respond
to pollsters by saying that they believe that terrorist attacks on U.S.
troop are justified, we have a serious problem.
In my view, we are not going to be able to turn that around until we
make clear that our policies are consistent with our interests and our
professed values. We need to get to the bottom of how we got into Iraq
and how we are conducting this operation in Iraq now. We need to get to
the bottom of that. We need to determine who is responsible for some of
the stories that we have seen in the papers the past few days; and if
we do not do that, we are going to continue to invite the kind of
negative opinion around the world that is plaguing our ability to
succeed in Iraq. I would hope that this House would recognize that
responsibility.
Mr. WALSH. Mr. Speaker, as I stated at the outset, we believe that
the House position to provide an additional $50 million in the Military
Quality of Life Subcommittee appropriations bill to provide additional
overhead cover system is essential. And we would go into the conference
hoping that the Senate would see the wisdom of what the House has done
and retain the House position.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the
distinguished minority leader (Ms. Pelosi).
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman for
yielding and for his leadership on this issue.
I am pleased to join the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) in
saluting our troops. Wherever they are serving, at home or abroad, we
owe them a deep debt of gratitude for their courage, for their
patriotism, for the sacrifices they are willing to make for our
country. We are very, very proud of them, and when they come home, we
want to honor their service by giving them what they need as veterans,
and those needs will be large.
Mr. Speaker, I strongly support the motion to instruct offered by the
gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey). We must provide those we send in
to fight in Iraq with everything they need to serve, to keep them safe
and so that they can return as safe as possible.
It is tragic that more than 2\1/2\ years after the invasion of Iraq,
that long a time, we are still encountering such appalling needs in the
area of force protection. History will not treat kindly those who
embarked on a war of choice without making sure that our troops were
properly equipped. Not enough body armor, not enough jammers for
protection against explosive devices, not enough armored vehicles, not
enough overhead cover systems, the list goes on and on.
Once again, Congress must deal with the consequences of the Bush
administration's bad planning. We have had to do it before in the
appropriations bills, and we are doing it here today with the gentleman
from Wisconsin's motion to instruct.
Congress has a responsibility to find out why so many things about
Iraq have gone so terribly wrong. This Republican cover-up Congress has
never lived up to the oversight responsibility to ask the questions.
One of the essential elements of the force protection, for example,
is good intelligence. Our Nation spends billions of dollars each year
on intelligence programs and activities, and when they do not produce
timely and reliable intelligence, we make the American people less
safe, and Congress has a duty to find out why.
The intelligence used as the justification for the administration's
decision to go into war in Iraq was wrong. That Iraq possessed weapons
of mass destruction, that was wrong. I said at the time that the
intelligence did not support the threat that the administration was
describing, but, nonetheless, the intelligence that they were using was
wrong.
Given the enormous consequences of that decision, more than 2,000
American soldiers have been killed; more than 15,000 wounded, many of
them permanently; more than a quarter of a trillion dollars spent; and
enormous damage done to the reputation of the United States in the eyes
of the world. The cost of lives and limbs and taxpayer dollars and
reputation is enormous.
Congress has an obligation to identify and correct the problems that
led to the production of false intelligence. Our troops are at risk
until that is done; and yet, as we address other force protection
issues, there is no sense of urgency to undertake a thorough review of
what went wrong with the intelligence. Neither the issue of the quality
of the intelligence nor the equally important issue of whether
intelligence was politicized have been investigated by this Congress.
That is why shortly I will offer the House a chance to do more for
force protection than provide the $50 million in this motion to
instruct, as important as that money is.
[[Page H9566]]
Democrats have continually asked for investigation of pre-war
intelligence, and those requests have been repeatedly denied. The same
is true for requests to investigate the other matters related to the
war in Iraq: The prison abuse scandals, the no-bid Halliburton
reconstruction contracts, the misuse of classified information to
discredit administration critics.
Each of these matters has national security implications that need to
be examined, particularly on the issue of going to war and the conduct
of war. Congress has an obligation to make sure that decisions were
made properly and that these decisions are based on truth and trust.
Until the Congress examines fully issues like whether intelligence
was politicized, we have failed in a fundamental way to protect our
troops and maintain a level of trust with the American people.
I urge the House to support both the Obey motion to instruct and my
subsequent resolution on Iraq.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gingrey). Without objection, the
previous question is ordered on the motion to instruct.
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to instruct
offered by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).
The motion was agreed to.
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