Congressional Record, Volume 150 Issue 57 (Thursday, April 29, 2004)

[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 57 (Thursday, April 29, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4671-S4673]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

PLAYING POLITICS WITH IRAQ

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, as President pro tempore and presiding
over the Senate, I have found the overheated rhetoric on Iraq over the
last few days at best disappointing and at worst misleading, harshly
partisan, and motivated by election year politics. I have simply had
enough of this. I have come to the floor to ask my Senate colleagues to
restore the level of debate that this institution demands. I urge the
Senate to not play politics with Iraq.
Do not seek to gain some slim, fleeting advantage at the ballot box
by making our country appear divided, and by making reckless
accusations.
Our troops in Iraq deserve better than this. They deserve much
better. If there is debate, let it be reasoned and measured, and
focused on the way forward in this war on terrorism.
When our forces are deployed and in the field, they deserve nothing
less than our absolute, unwavering commitment to their success. Nothing
less.
I take strong issue with three particular themes: First, the analogy
that Iraq is somehow like Vietnam. This analogy is wrong, and simply
inflammatory; second, that the President was wrong when he made his
speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln a year ago on May 1; and third, that
somehow our action to remove the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein was in
any regard ``unprovoked.'' That is simply and plainly not true.
Iraq is not Vietnam. It is wildly irresponsible--even reckless--to
compare the situation in Iraq to the war in Vietnam. Those who make
that false claim are engaging in dangerous rhetoric, and are ill
informed about history and facts of the two conflicts.
Comparing Iraq to Vietnam does not advance the debate, it simply
inflames the issue, obscures the facts and, unfortunately, misleads the
American people.
My colleague, the senior Senator from Massachusetts, started this
Iraq is Vietnam spin in a speech a few weeks ago. Of all people, he
knows better than to make that bogus comparison.
I encourage my colleagues to turn down the rhetoric on Vietnam, and
get the facts right. Here are some of those facts:
In Vietnam, President Kennedy sent ``advisers'' to Vietnam in 1961,
but they were not authorized to use force until 1964, 3 years later.
Then, in 1971, Congress repealed that authority.
In Iraq, this very Congress approved a resolution that authorized the
use of force in October, 2002, well in advance of any forces being
deployed. That resolution still stands today.
In Vietnam, eight nations joined with the United States.
In Iraq, over 30 nations are in our coalition, including 16 of 26
NATO allies.
In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh violated zero U.N. Security Council
resolutions--none.
In Iraq, Saddam Hussein violated seventeen--seventeen--U.N. Security
Council resolutions, beginning immediately after the 1991 Gulf war
cease fire agreement.
In Vietnam, how many draftees were sent to that country? About two
million draftees, all young men.
In Iraq, how many draftees are there? Zero, none. We have an all-
volunteer force. They know the risks, they know their duty, and they
volunteer to step forward and serve our country.
I have yet to meet one at the hospitals here who hasn't asked me the
question: How can I go back to my unit? How can I go back to Iraq? They
ask that despite the many serious wounds they have.
In Vietnam, against how many Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians did
Ho Chi Minh use chemical and biological weapons? Were there chemical
and biological weapons used by North Vietnam? No, none.
In Iraq, against how many Iraqis, Iranians, and Kurds did Saddam
Hussein use chemical and biological weapons? Thousands and thousands of
people--the Kurds, the Iraqis, and Iranians--were the subject of
chemical and biological weapons used by Saddam Hussein.
I have an article here from last Sunday's Providence Journal-
Bulletin, and the headline of that article is this: ``Historians,
Soldiers Hesitant to Call Iraq another Vietnam: the purposes, strategy,
terrain and players in the Vietnam war were far different than those in
Iraq, many experts say.''
Far different than those in Iraq, indeed.
That is a true statement by the Providence Journal-Bulletin. In this
article, Anthony Cordesman, a military expert and former diplomat, says
``I really worry about the analogy between Vietnam and Iraq, where
we're not really fighting a foreign enemy.''
Mr. Cordesman, who is now at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, goes on to say:

There is as yet no massive insurgency [confronting
coalition forces]. We're not dealing with massive external
powers supporting the insurgents. We do not have a situation
where we have lost a majority of the population as we did in
Vietnam when we lost the Buddhists. We are not attempting to
get around the reality of a need to create a legitimate
government, which we did after the fall of the South
Vietnam's Diem regime.

I hope that cooler heads and cooler rhetoric will prevail here in the
Senate. My colleague from Delaware, the ranking member of the Senate
Foreign Relations committee, has found the Vietnam analogy,
``misleading'' because, as he says, ``The vast majority of Iraqis share
our vision for a participatory, representative democracy.''
President Bush is absolutely right when he says that the Vietnam-Iraq
analogy is false. And he is right that brandishing that false analogy
as a rhetorical weapon, ``sends the wrong message to our troops and
sends the wrong message to the enemy.''

[[Page S4672]]

With regard to President Bush's speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln,
some have chosen to make a great issue about it. They have endlessly
taunted the Commander in Chief for words on a banner, and have twisted
his words to suit their purposes.
What the President said is this:

Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle
of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And
now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing
that country.

The President was dead-on right. He spoke clearly and plainly, yet
some refuse to listen to what he said.
He went on to say that ``major combat operations in Iraq have
ended.'' The President was and is absolutely correct today in making
that statement.
Saddam's regime of oppression and torture was gone. The Hussein Baath
Party regime was disbanded, and no longer in power. Baghdad had fallen,
and was under the control of the coalition of which we were the leader.
Active, organized military resistance had collapsed. Saddam's
military forces were not resisting; their will to fight had been
destroyed; they had no ability to command and control the few forces
they had left.
The mission was to remove a threatening, brutal dictator from power,
to bring to an end the ruthless oppression of the Iraqi people--and
that mission was accomplished.
President Bush made it abundantly clear that he recognized the
challenges that would face America and confront our troops. He said,
``And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that
country.''
He said:

We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order
to parts of that country that remain dangerous. The
transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but
it is worth the effort. Our coalition will stay until our
work is done.

That could not be clearer or more truthful. There are those in this
body who should listen to these words and hear them accurately.
Let me state that again. He said:

The clear and compelling meaning of the President's words on May 1,
2003 was that Saddam Hussein had been removed from power, Iraq's
military defeated, and the work of stabilizing and reconstructing Iraq
had begun--and that such work would be both difficult and costly.
The President was right when he spoke on the carrier a year ago, and
he is still right today.
What has happened in recent weeks and months is an emerging
insurgency, and the appearance of foreign fighters in Iraq who will do
anything--anything--to see the coalition fail, and see Iraq revert back
to a brutal dictatorship, and become a breeding ground for radical
Islamic terrorists.
These terrorists have joined with former regime elements, and have
chosen to make Iraq a full-blown battlefield in the war on terrorism.
This is not a war against Saddam Hussein. This is a war on terrorism.
What these terrorists and their sympathizers fear most is Iraq becoming
a stable, functioning democracy that benefits the Iraqi people, joins
the world community, and serves as a source of democratic influence on
the people of the region.
They have no regard for the will of the Iraqi people, for their
safety, for their security or for their future. They are simply using
Iraqi soil, and taking innocent Iraqi lives, in their ruthless Jihad,
in their desire to spread chaos and foment hate across the Islamic
world, and in their hatred of freedom, moderation and democracy.
I urge those who are twisting the President's words of now almost a
year ago to listen carefully to what he said, to end the personal
attack, to stop the spin. Stop parsing words and stop mocking plastic
banners. We can and we must do better than that in the Senate.
And unprovoked? I heard the word ``unprovoked.'' My third point is, I
say to those who claim the war to liberate Iraq was somehow
``unprovoked,'' that is wrong. It is absolutely wrong. Could that
statement be more preposterous? Could anything be more disconnected
from the truth in Iraq? Can anyone say with a straight face Saddam
Hussein did nothing to provoke the international community?
Here is a sampling of some of the ways that Saddam Hussein provoked
this conflict, how he provoked the United States, and how he provoked
the world. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran and used chemical weapons against
the Iranian people. In 1988, Saddam's forces killed 5,000 innocent
civilians in a chemical weapons attack against the Kurdish villages of
Halabja. In 1990, Saddam's forces invaded another neighbor, this time
Kuwait. We all know in the Gulf War thousands of innocent Kuwaiti
civilians were raped, tortured, and murdered during the occupation. In
1991, Iraq was poised to march on other nations but was stopped by a
U.S.-led coalition of forces. We call that the Gulf War. Iraq has
launched ballistic missiles at four of its neighbors. Remember that,
``unprovoked''? It launched ballistic missiles at four of its
neighbors: Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Israel. I might say, I was
in Israel when one of those was launched.
Saddam's Iraq was, at a minimum, engaged in clandestine research and
development activities to develop, refine, and employ chemical and
biological weapons. From 1991 to 2003, Saddam's Iraq fired more than
1,000 missiles at our aircraft as they patroled Iraq's U.N.-sanctioned
no-fly zones. We went over to Kuwait. We met the pilots who were flying
day after day--what we call the CAP, the constant air patrol--at the
request of the U.N. in compliance with the U.N. resolution. They told
us how they were fired at again and again and again. Saddam Hussein was
firing at U.S. planes daily. Provocation? I can't think of another
provocation. As a matter of fact, we should have gone to war when
President Clinton said he was about ready to go to war in 1998.
For more than a decade, Saddam's Iraq steadfastly ignored the will of
the United Nations and the civilized world and ignored no fewer than 17
U.N. resolutions.
I could continue with the list, but the point is the same: To say
that Saddam Hussein is not responsible for his fate and Iraq's current
status and did nothing to provoke that change is ludicrous. It is
plainly untrue.
Let me conclude by saying this: The tone of the debate on Iraq must
change. With our troops under daily attack, we cannot make Iraq a
political football in an election year or any year.
Representative Jim Marshall, a freshman Democrat from Georgia, wrote
a compelling column in the Washington Post last October. The title of
his column was ``Don't Play Politics on Iraq.'' A decorated Army Ranger
who served in Vietnam, Congressman Marshall was right then and he is
right today. His observations were wise then and even wiser today:
Don't play politics on Iraq.
Let me quote from that article Congressman Marshall wrote:

Many in Washington view the contest for the presidency and
the control of Congress as a zero-sum game without external
costs or benefits. Politicians and activists in each party
reflexively celebrate, spread and embellish the news bad for
the opposition. But to do that now with regard to Iraq harms
our troops and our effort. Concerning Iraq, this normal
political tripe can impose a heavy external cost.

I continue with the article written by Congressman Marshall:

For now, responsible Democrats should carefully avoid using
the language of failure. It is false. It endangers our troops
and our effort. It can be unforgivably self-fulfilling.

That Congressman gets it. He really gets it. You do not play politics
on Iraq. You do not play politics with national security. You do not
play politics with the defense of this country. You do not play
politics with troops deployed. You do not let seeking partisan
advantage drive a wedge between Americans when troops are in harm's
way.
I urge our colleagues to end this divisive practice of using the
floor of this Senate and this issue on Iraq to bash the administration
to try to score political points. We can do better than that. For those
who persist on this practice, reflect on Congressman Marshall's words:
It endangers our troops and our effort. It is simply wrong, election
year or not. Those who irresponsibly endanger or use Iraq for partisan
advantage should be warmed: You must understand and take responsibility
for

[[Page S4673]]

the message you send to the enemies of freedom, democracy, and liberty
through the world.
This country should be united when we have troops abroad. We should
be united when we have people trying to assist Iraqis to find freedom
and defeat the terrorists who persist to bring the war on terrorism to
Iraq after we won the war against Saddam Hussein. I urge my colleagues
to follow Congressman Marshall's injunction: Do not play politics
anymore on Iraq.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

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