[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 97 (Friday, June 27, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8830-S8832]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WAR IN IRAQ
Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I planned yesterday to be here today to
speak about a totally different subject, and then we learned last
evening what happened to Strom Thurmond. With the permission of my
colleagues, I wish to move for a few minutes to a totally different
subject, and that is the war in Iraq. I say ``the war in Iraq'' because
there is still a war in Iraq.
I returned from Baghdad on Tuesday with two of my distinguished
Republican colleagues--Senators Lugar and Hagel. I came away with
several impressions that I want to pass on to my colleagues in the hope
that it will give some additional information or insight. My
impressions, although not stated in the same way by my two colleagues,
Senators Hagel and Lugar, I am confident are the same ones they had
because we did a number of press conferences and we talked at length.
It was a 14-hour flight back. We are good friends, and we all agree on
the essence of what I am about to say, although we have different
emphasis on different points. Let me say what those primary impressions
are and why I think there is such an urgency.
First, there is still a war going on. It is more like a guerrilla war
but there is a war. Meeting with our military troops, meeting with our
generals, one told us: Every time I send a young man out on patrol on
the streets of Baghdad in a humvee, I tell them: Treat it as if you are
in battle.
He told us how they know now that our young men and women are being
targeted not by some random group of Islamists who are angry but by
professionals, the leftover fedayeen, the Republican Guard. Where did
all these folks go? They went back into their communities.
One colonel told us they know that people who are engaged in going
after Americans are instructed in the following way: All our young men
and women wear helmets and flack jackets. They are instructed when
there is a disturbance to come out of the crowd. If they are going to
try to kill one of our young men and women, there is a 4-inch opening
to do it; that is, space between the back of the helmet and the top of
the bulletproof vest is where they aim to kill our soldiers. That is
not the work of just random and irrational people who are angry we are
in their country. How well coordinated and how well organized it is
they do not know, and I do not know, but there is still a war going on.
The second impression I came back with is, what a remarkable group of
people we have working in the toughest of conditions against the
longest of odds to put Iraq back on its feet and back into the hands of
the Iraqi people. I am not merely talking about our military, which has
been celebrated with good reason and everybody knows; I am talking
about our civilians. I am talking about Ambassador Bremer. I am talking
about Ambassador Crocker. I am talking about Secretary Slocum. I am
talking about the most talented group of people we have assembled, the
people who have had incredible experience in Bosnia, in Kosovo, and in
Afghanistan in trying to stand up a police department.
We spent an hour or more at the police training academy with men I
know are the best in the world. I know because I spent so much time in
the Balkans and so much time dealing with the subject. I know they are
the single best in the world. In fact, coincidentally, one of them
happens to be a former chief of police of the Newark Police Department
in the town in which I attended college, the University of Delaware.
These are incredibly talented people working under incredibly difficult
conditions, made more difficult, I am sad to say, by the incredible
miscalculations this administration is making about how to proceed in
Iraq.
Many of us on this floor--I am not unique--have pointed out that
winning the war is only half the problem, the smaller half. Winning the
peace is an astronomically difficult subject. As I say to my colleagues
and anyone who asks, if the Lord Almighty came down and sat in this
chair and agreed to give the President and those on the ground in Iraq
the right answers to the next 20 decisions they had to make, the next
50 decisions they had to make, consequential decisions, we still only
have, in my view, a 65-percent chance of getting it right.
That is how complicated Iraq is. That is how difficult this problem
is. But it has been made much more difficult, frankly, by the wrong
assumptions that were made by the administration. This is not second-
guessing. These are things that, for a year before, many of us argued
with them about.
I supported us taking out that tyrant, but there seems to be a tone
deafness right now, and that is that the administration thought
building the peace would be built upon three assumptions they had, for
which, in the hearings we held I never found any basis. One is, they
expected to find a fully functioning bureaucracy when they got to Iraq,
a literate country that would have in place for each of their
departments--think of it in terms of the United States--their
department of education, their department of public works, their
department of highways, their department of security. We were told,
with absolute certainty by the administration, that all we had to do
was go in and decapitate the Baathists, that is the neo-Nazis who ran
that country, and we would have this infrastructure ready to take over
the running of their country. But it melted away. It is not there.
The second assumption was we were told they expected to find an army
intact. Again, we decapitate the bad guys but there would be a standing
army we could work with. That melted away. It does not exist, and to
the extent it exists, it is engaged in guerrilla activity.
The third assumption was we were going to find a police force in the
country that once we took the bad apples out of--like we did, by the
way, in Colombia, helping them vet their national police--that we would
have tens of thousands of police officers we could work with who were
trained. There are none, and there never were any.
The result has been massive problems in terms of getting basic
services back and restoring security. We have seen looting and
political sabotage against power, oil, and water plants, some organized
resistance, which seems to be getting more organized. All of this is
compounded by years of neglect by Saddam Hussein's regime. Neither this
administration nor any of us could have reasonably anticipated how
badly he treated the infrastructure of his own country. It is not
merely that he did not repair the infrastructure during the period when
the embargo was on them, when they were operating under sanctions, but
for 30 years.
In fairness to the administration, no one knew how badly he had raped
and pillaged his own country and infrastructure. We knew what he did to
his people but we did not know this.
Ultimately, Iraqis need to do all these jobs: Administrate, be the
army, be the police force, restore security, maintain security, but it
is going to take a long time to do that. Meanwhile, we the
international community should be filling the gaps, not we the United
States alone.
What is worse is we should have known better. We had extensive
experience in the Balkans. We had considerable experience in
Afghanistan, which is a failure, in my view. We had considerable
bipartisan testimony from experts on the left, right, and center, going
back to July, that these problems would be protracted and they would be
deep. I will never forget two leading generals, the former head of
CENTCOM and former NATO director, testifying before our committee, and
I remember the parallel they used.
They said we have this incredible military juggernaut which we have
planned incredibly well and executed it incredibly well, but we should
in tandem be planning for the occupation of Iraq. There was virtually
no planning, but that is water over the dam.
That is not just me. Ask my Republican colleagues who deal with this.
There was no planning. The question now, and my purpose today, is not
to say, aha, look at the mistake you made, you did not listen. It is to
say, let's get over this. Now that we realize and the whole world
understands these infrastructures do not exist, it is time to
internationalize the effort.
First, we need a significant infusion of military and civilian police
to fill
[[Page S8831]]
the gap of the Iraqi police. On another date, I will spend more time on
this, but there are 79,000 Iraqi police spots we have to fill. Our
experts on the ground in Iraq say there is a need immediately for 5,800
European crack police, the gens de guerre, to be brought in to maintain
the peace and security of the citizens, stop the looting, make the
traffic lights work, investigate the murders and the rapes, while we
are training 80,000 new police officers.
There is a gigantic vacuum, and our own people on the ground say we
need help now. So I implore the President to get over his feelings
about the Europeans, the French and the Germans in particular, and seek
their assistance because I believe they are ready to assist. They need
to be asked.
As I said, we are starting from scratch to build an Iraqi police
force of 73,000 people with 18,000 cars. Now we have about 30,000 Iraqi
police, all ill trained, with about 200 cars. How long will it take to
get to 73,000, which is a very thin blue line? The estimate of many is
about 5 years. So what do we do in the meantime if we do not seek to
internationalize this?
Second, we need to sustain and probably increase our military forces
in Iraq, and it need not be more Americans. We should be reaching out
to NATO. When I have spoken to Lord Robertson, when I have spoken to
the head of NATO, and spoken to the country specific, I am told they
are prepared to send hard, tough, fighting troops into Iraq, but they
want to be asked. To the best of my knowledge, the President and
Secretary of Defense and the Vice President have decided not to ask. If
that is true, that is foolhardy.
We need between 30,000 and 60,000 forces there, and they should be
NATO forces. Meanwhile, the notion that has been floated out of the
Pentagon by Mr. Rumsfeld, as he suggested 6 weeks ago that we could get
down to 30,000 troops by the end of the year, is pure fantasy. Who are
we kidding? Get down to 30,000 troops within 6 months? Unless he has a
plan no one has ever heard of internationalizing this to the extent
that they are backfilled with European and other forces.
We need to get more troops in. They need to be effective, and the
best place to look is NATO. As I said, I met with Secretary General
Robertson last weekend. NATO is willing to help, but the administration
has to ask. So please ask, Mr. President.
Third, we are going to need significant resources to get all of this
done. Just a couple of weeks ago my committee, headed by Senator Lugar,
had testimony from leading members of the administration saying do not
worry; basically, the oil revenues are going to take care of all of
this. What a joke. We have a leading oil man appointed by the
administration in Baghdad with whom we sat and met, my two colleagues
and I. He said we will get to 1 million barrels a day maybe by the end
of the summer; maybe by the end of 2004, an average of 2.4 million a
day.
Let me explain that. It means there may be the ability to generate $5
billion worth of revenue this year and $14 billion next year; and it
costs us $3 billion a month just to maintain our troops there.
It is time we start leveling with the American people. Maybe the most
important impression was our folks on the ground are doing an
incredible job. I am not being solicitous. I am not just saying we are
doing a great job. They are doing an incredible job. The most positive
thing I came away with: I went over despondent about a lack of a
political game plan of transferring government to the Iraqis. I am
truly impressed with Ambassador Bremer and his team. They have that
process underway, after we finally discarded what I assume was the
Cheney-Rumsfeld idea of putting Mr. Garner in there and finding Mr.
Chalabi--I may be wrong about that; if I am, I apologize for sounding
harsh.
But the President was wise enough to recognize the model they
originally came up with on the political transition--General Garner is
a fine man, and the expatriates being the basis upon which the
government would be stood up quickly--was not realistic, and he made a
swift change. I implore the President to make a similar change in
thinking about police and the military.
Nobody back home understands. The American people have not been given
the facts, in my view, to be able to fully understand how monumental
the task is we are undertaking, how long it will take and how much it
will cost, how many troops. The President needs to go to the American
people and tell them.
I will end where I began 10 months ago in this Chamber after my
hearings in July--almost a year ago, when I chaired the Foreign
Relations Committee. I said then and I repeat it: The one thing all who
come out of the Vietnam era generation can agree on is, regardless of
what our view was on the war at the time, no foreign policy, no matter
how well fashioned, can be sustained without the informed consent of
the American people.
As I have said repeatedly, folks in my State and around the country
thought when we went in that Johnny and Jane would come marching home
as they did after gulf I, immediately after the war. There is a bit of
shock and dismay on the part of the families of the National Guard and
the reservists when they find out their dads and moms are not coming
home; they are being extended.
We knew ahead of time they would have to be extended. You knew it, I
knew it. We did not tell. We told them, the President didn't. Mr.
President, please go on television, tell the American people what is
expected of them now. They will respond. We are a mature people. They
don't like the fact that 161,000 Americans have to stay there for an
extended period of time. But we have to tell them, and tell them why it
is so important it be done. It is in the naked self-interests of the
United States that we get this right--that we stand up with a
government at the end of the day that is at least more democratic, is
not a breeding ground for terror, and is a stabilizing influence in the
region because it will save the lives of our children and our
grandchildren if we do it right. We have an opportunity to do it right.
This is doable. But not on the cheap, and not without leveling with the
American people.
Nearly 2 months ago, on May 1, President Bush landed on the USS
Abraham Lincoln to address our troops and the Nation. Behind them was a
large banner that read ``Mission accomplished.'' Our troops did
accomplish their first mission, a remarkable mission in Iraq, of
ridding its people of the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein. But the
larger and more difficult mission is building the peace in Iraq and is
far from accomplished. In fact, it has only just begun.
I respectfully suggest it is time for the President to explain that
to the American people, to talk to us straight about the hundreds of
thousands of troops who will be needed immediately and the tens of
thousands of troops who will be needed for a long time, and the tens of
billions of dollars that will be needed, and how we will have to
energize the international community as donor nations to come up with
that money so we do not hold the bag for it all. It will take many
years.
When Senator Lugar and I held our hearings, everybody kept saying,
the day after the war, and we said, no, it is not the day after, it is
the decade after Saddam Hussein is down--the decade after. I have not
found one reasonable person who suggests that the United States will
not be heavily involved, even after there is a transition to an Iraqi
Government, for at least the next 3 to 5 years. If anybody thinks it is
less than that, they are kidding themselves. If it is less than that,
it will mean we will lose the peace.
I know it is dangerous, and I can see my colleague looking at me; it
is dangerous to prognosticate in this business because everybody
remembers exactly what you said. But I am saying the same thing I said
last July. It was a worthy goal to take down Saddam Hussein. He was a
danger to his people. The one thing the whole world has seen is what a
madman he was. He has killed 300,000 of his own people at least. Mass
graves abound. We did a worthy and noble thing. But we must
internationalize this effort now. Now. Now. We must level with the
American people.
I conclude by saying what the troops told us. You have been on these
missions. These young men and women we have dinner with, these young
troops we go out and ride around with, the people we spend our time
with in the
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country, they want to know in Baghdad, are we going to support them?
They know how tough this is. They know how many more of them are going
to die. They know their life is at risk. They know this is an
incredibly difficult undertaking, and they are wondering why, when they
pick up the papers back home, it is not being stated that way. It is
being treated as if this is over. The American people deserve to be
leveled with.
Everyone here knows, whether we say another year or 10, whether it is
75,000 troops or 160,000, whether it is $1 billion or $20 billion or
$40 billion, we all know it is a lot more than any of us are telling
the American people.
It is time, as one of my Republican colleagues said, to tell the
truth. I am not suggesting the President is lying. He is not. I am
suggesting the American people do not have any idea what we have signed
them on to. We had better tell them.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
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