[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 127 (Tuesday, September 16, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11561-S11562]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          U.S. POLICY IN IRAQ

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I would like to share with my colleagues 
the recent remarks of our former colleague Senator Max Cleland 
concerning U.S. policy in Iraq.
  This is a passionate, powerful speech by a true American hero whose 
tremendous service to, and personal sacrifice for, this country should 
make of all of us mindful of his cautions and warnings. I ask unanimous 
consent that former Senator Cleland's speech by printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

        [DSCC Iraq Policy Forum, Washington, DC, Sept. 15, 2003]

                         Disaster in the Desert

                (Former Senator Max Cleland, D-Georgia)

       ``The public had been led into a trap from which it will be 
     hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked 
     into it by a steady withholding of information,'' he said. 
     ``The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. 
     Things have been far worse than we have been told, our 
     administration more bloody and inefficient than the public 
     knows. He added: ``We are today not far from a disaster''--
     T.E. Lawrence The Sunday Times of London August 22, 1920.
       Let me see if I can get this straight.
       The President of the United States decides to go to war 
     against a nation led by a brutal dictator supported by one 
     party rule. That dictator has made war on his neighbors. The 
     President decides this is a threat to the United States. In 
     his campaign for President he gives no indication of wanting 
     to go to war. In fact, he decries the over-extension of 
     American military might and says other nations must do more. 
     However, unbenounced to the American public, the President's 
     own Pentagon advisors have already cooked up a plan to go to 
     war. All they are looking for is an excuse.
       An element of the U.S. military is under attack. The 
     President, his Secretary of Defense and his advisors sell the 
     idea to Congress and the American people that it is time to 
     go to war. Based on faulty intelligence, cherry-picked 
     information is fed to Congress and the American people. The 
     President goes on national television to explain the case for 
     war, using as part of the rationale for the war an incident 
     that never happened. The Congress buys the bait hook, line 
     and sinker and passes a resolution giving the President the 
     authority to use ``all necessary means'' to prosecute the 
     war.
       The war is started with an air and ground attack. Initially 
     there is optimism. The President says we are winning. The 
     cocky, self-assured Secretary of Defense says we are winning. 
     As a matter of fact, the Secretary of Defense promises the 
     troops will be home soon.
       However, the truth on the ground that the soldiers face in 
     the war is different than the political policy that sent them 
     there. They face increased opposition from a determined 
     enemy. They are surprised by terrorist attacks, suicide 
     bombers, village assassinations, increasing casualties and 
     growing anti-American sentiment. They find themselves bogged 
     down in a guerrilla land war, unable to move forward and 
     unable to disengage because there are no allies in the war to 
     turn the war over to. There is no plan B. There is no exit 
     strategy. Military morale declines. The President's 
     popularity sinks and the American people are increasingly 
     frustrated by the cost of blood and treasure poured into a 
     never-ending war.
       Sound familiar? It does to me!
       The President was Lyndon Johnson.
       Got Ya!
       The cocky, self-assured Secretary of Defense was Robert 
     McNamara.
       Got ya again!
       The Congressional resolution was the Gulf of Tonkin 
     resolution.
       You are catching on!
       The war was the war that me, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, John 
     McCain and three and-a-half million other Americans of our 
     generation were caught up in. It was the scene of America's 
     longest war. It was also the locale

[[Page S11562]]

     of the most frustrating outcome of any war this nation has 
     ever fought.
       Unfortunately, the people who drove the engine to get into 
     the war in Iraq never served in Vietnam.
       Not the President.
       Not the Vice-President.
       Not the Secretary of Defense.
       Not the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
       Too bad. They could have learned some lessons.
       First, they could have learned not to underestimate the 
     enemy. The enemy always has one option you cannot control. He 
     always has the option to die. This is especially true if you 
     are dealing with true believers and guerrillas fighting for 
     their version of reality--whether political or religious. 
     They are what Tom Friedman of the New York Times calls the 
     ``non-deterables.'' If those non-deterables are already home 
     in their country, they will be able to wait you out until you 
     go home.
       Second, if the enemy adopts a `hit and run' strategy 
     designed to inflict maximum casualties on you, you may win 
     every battle but the battles you fight (as Walter Lippman 
     once said about the Vietnam War,) can't win the war.
       Third, if you adopt a strategy of not just preemptive 
     strike but also preemptive war you own the aftermath. You 
     better plan for it. You better have an exit strategy because 
     you cannot stay there indefinitely unless you make it the 
     51st state. If you do stay an extended period of time, you 
     then become an occupier, not a liberator. That feeds the 
     enemy against you.
       Fourth, if you adopt the strategy of pre-emptive war, your 
     intelligence must be not just ``darn good,'' as the President 
     has said, it must be ``bullet proof,'' as Secretary Rumsfeld 
     claimed the administration had against Saddam Hussein. 
     Anything short of that saps credibility.
       Fifth, if you want to know what is really going on in the 
     war, ask the troops on the ground, not the policy makers in 
     Washington. The ``ground truth,'' as the soldiers call it, is 
     always more accurate than the truth expounded through the 
     mouths of those who plan the war and have a political, 
     personal and emotional investment in their policy. They will 
     bend any fact, even intelligence, to their own ends. If the 
     ground truth and the policy truth begin to diverge, ``Shock 
     and Awe'' will turn into what one officer in Iraq has 
     described as, ``Shock and Awe S__!''
       Sixth, in a democracy instead of truth being the 
     first casualty in war, it should be the first cause of 
     war. It is the only way the Congress and the American 
     people can cope with getting through it. As credibility is 
     strained, support for the war and support for the troops 
     goes downhill. Continued loss of credibility drains troop 
     morale, the media becomes more suspicious, the public 
     becomes more incredulous and the Congress is reduced to 
     hearings and investigations.
       Instead of learning the lessons of Vietnam, where all of 
     the above happened, the President, the Vice-President, the 
     Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary of Defense have 
     gotten this country into a disaster in the desert. They 
     attacked a country that had not attacked us. They did so on 
     intelligence that was faulty, misrepresented and highly 
     questionable. A key piece of that intelligence was an out-
     right lie which the White House put into the President's 
     State of the Union speech. These officials have over-extended 
     the American military, including the Guard and the Reserve 
     and expanded the United States Army to the breaking point. A 
     quarter of a million troops are committed to the Iraq war 
     theater, most bogged down in Baghdad. Morale is declining and 
     casualties continue to increase. In addition to the human 
     cost, the funding of the war costs a billion dollars a week, 
     adding to the additional burden of an already depressed 
     economy.
       The President has declared ``major combat over'' and sent a 
     message to every terrorist, ``Bring them on.'' As a result, 
     he has lost more people in his war than his father did in his 
     and there is no end in site.
       Military commanders are left with extended tours of duty 
     for servicemen and women, told long ago they were going home, 
     and keeping American forces on the ground where they have 
     become sitting ducks in a shooting gallery for every 
     terrorist group in the Middle East.
       Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President. Sorry you didn't go when 
     you had the chance.

                          ____________________