[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 108 (Monday, September 13, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9106-S9108]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FAILED POLICY IN IRAQ
Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, 3 days ago, a picture appeared in the
Minneapolis-based Star Tribune newspaper, accompanying a Los Angeles
Times article whose headline read: ``U.S. Makes Show of Strength in
Fallujah.''
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in
the Record following my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. DAYTON. The picture, for the record, showed about 30 Iraqi
civilians standing amidst the rubble of bombed buildings in the Iraqi
town of Fallujah. In the forefront of the picture were five Iraqi
children, and the caption beneath the picture read:
[[Page S9107]]
An Iraqi boy weeps, as people survey the destruction in a
neighborhood, following a U.S. airstrike overnight. Twelve
Iraqis were killed, including several women and children. . . .
President Bush makes a show of strength, and an Iraqi boy weeps. I
say ``President Bush'' because this is not the U.S. military. They are
carrying out the orders of their Commander in Chief. This is not the
American people because the American people do not kill innocent women
and children in another country. This is the result of and the
responsibility of a failed policy in Iraq by the President and his
administration.
There were at least two other aerial bombings that day in two other
Iraqi cities, according to that one story--more destruction, more
civilian casualties, more children weeping; children who lost brothers,
sisters, mothers, fathers, grandparents, and friends; children who will
have the United States of America, for the rest of their lives, seared
into their memories; children who will, horribly, possibly cheer if
terrorists can cause that kind of terrible destruction to Americans in
American cities; children who might even be willing to do something
like that themselves in revenge.
President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other apologists for this
continuing war in Iraq claim that they are fighting terrorists there so
we won't have to fight them here. By these actions, I maintain they are
creating terrorists in Iraq whom we will have to fight here, whom we
will have to defend against, fend off, and protect ourselves from for
years, even decades to come. How would we feel if our children or our
friends or our parents or wives or husbands were buried beneath the
rubble that used to be our homes, our stores, and our neighborhoods?
I do not fault the courageous Americans in our Armed Forces who have
borne the brunt of this administration's failed policy. To the
contrary, I salute them for their heroism and their patriotism. It has
been over a year and a half since they won the initial military victory
in Iraq. They went from the Iraqi border to Baghdad in 3 weeks. They
routed Saddam Hussein's army. They toppled his evil regime. And since
then, they have stood guard until someone began to run that country.
They are still standing guard, 138,000 brave Americans. They are
fighting, they are bleeding, and they are dying because this
administration and their Iraqi allies have not figured out how to run
that country.
We need a policy, a plan, and a timetable to get out of Iraq--not to
lose Iraq but to leave Iraq, not tomorrow or next week, unfortunately--
because the Bush administration has failed. They have failed to prepare
for that. But not in 10 or 20 years, as my colleague, the senior
Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain, has predicted. He is not recommending
that course of action; he is just telling us and the American people
the truth. Thank goodness someone is telling us the truth, the truth
about what the Bush administration has gotten us into and where their
present policies will leave us.
What he can't tell us, because no one can, is how many more Americans
will die in Iraq during those 10 or 20 years; how many more Americans
will die elsewhere around the world or, God forbid, right in this very
country because of the failures of those policies today.
Today I am asking the esteemed chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee to hold oversight hearings this week on the current policy in
Iraq, on the military situation there, on the plans of this
administration, on the timetable for our continuing involvement there,
and on the costs in dollars and lives and international esteem to the
United States of America, because the American people deserve the
truth. This Congress deserves the facts. Our soldiers, our 138,000
courageous Americans serving in Iraq today, deserve to come home with
their military victory secured.
And I say to those who want to support our troops, if you want to
support our troops, bring them home alive, bring them home alive now or
as soon as possible hereafter, but not in 4 years or 10 years or 20
years. Make the administration in Iraq and the people of Iraq
responsible for their own country. That is what democracy is about. It
is about self-determination and self-responsibility. It is time the
people of Iraq become responsible for Iraq. It is time the 206,000
militia and military that we claim to have trained in Iraq become
responsible for Fallujah and Baghdad and everywhere else in Iraq.
The article I referred to earlier states: U.S. and Iraqi authorities
lost control of Fallujah last April after they turned the city over to
a U.S.-sanctioned force, the Fallujah brigade, which has now all but
disappeared.
Where did they disappear to? I supported that action back then. I
thought that was the right course of action, that we make Iraqis
responsible for the defense of their own country, for the security of
their own cities. Now I learn, not through this administration's
disclosures but through an article appearing in an investigative
story--thank goodness for the free and vigilant press because we
wouldn't learn those things here in Congress if we were waiting to be
told--that the Fallujah brigade has ``all but disappeared.''
That is a fundamental failure of this administration and the Iraqi
administration to train, equip, and motivate the Iraqi forces in Iraq
to stand up for and defend their own country from whomever it is over
there--insurgents, terrorists, and citizens who want an end to the
violence, understandably so, in their own homes and neighborhoods.
It is time to put Iraq in charge of Iraq, make them stand up and
fight for their own country, for their own cities, for their own
security, and stop forcing Americans on the ground or in the air to
cause this kind of destruction that that picture capsulizes which is
going to wreak future destruction on our own cities and our own people.
This is a failed policy. It is a disastrous policy. It is one for
which this administration should take responsibility.
Again, I call upon the Armed Services Committee of the Senate to hold
oversight hearings and tell the American people the truth about what is
going on there and what the future holds--in the near future, not the
future future.
Exhibit 1
[From the Los Angeles Times, Sept. 10, 2004]
U.S. Makes Show of Strength in Fallujah
(By Patrick J. McDonnell)
Baghdad.--U.S. forces rolled into the rebel bastion of
Samarra on Thursday and sought to reestablish Iraqi
government control as aircraft pounded suspected guerrilla
positions in two other insurgent strongholds: the flashpoint
city of Fallujah in the west and the trouble spot of Tal Afar
in the north.
The show of strength--along with the stated U.S. resolve to
crush a Shiite Muslim militia in Baghdad--underscored the
military's determination to exert control over the country in
the months leading up to elections scheduled for January.
The U.S. move against the three insurgent centers came
after a spike in attacks this week that pushed American
military fatalities from all causes to more than 1,000. The
actions appeared designed to dispel the perception that
swaths of Iraq had become a ``no-go'' zone for U.S. troops.
American warplanes struck Fallujah, the third attack in as
many days against suspected insurgent positions in the city
30 miles west of Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi authorities lost
control of Fallujah after U.S. Marines ended a three-week
siege last April and turned the city over to a U.S.-
sanctioned force, the Fallujah Brigade, which has now all but
disappeared.
Nine people, including two children, were reported killed
in a Fallujah house that the U.S. command suspected of being
used by allies of the Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi.
foreign fighters
On Thursday evening, a U.S. spokesman, Maj. Jay Antonelli,
revised the earlier description of events in Fallujah. ``In
spite of the great care taken to spare the lives of
noncombatants, an unknown number of Iraqi civilians were
unfortunately among those killed and wounded in the strike,''
Antonelli said in an e-mail statement.
``The foreign fighters who hide among the people of
Fallujah place them at significant risk,'' Antonelli said.
He added: ``Foreign fighters will not enjoy safe haven
anywhere in the city.''
In a separate statement, the U.S. command said military
operations around Tal Afar were designed to rid the city of
``a large terrorist element that has displaced local Iraqi
security forces throughout the recent weeks.''
The U.S. military said 57 insurgents were killed in the
attack on Tal Afar, a northern city near the border with
Syria that lies on smuggling routes for weapons and foreign
fighters. The provincial health director, Dr. Rabie Yassin,
said 27 civilians were killed and 70 wounded. It was unclear
whether those reported by the Iraqis as civilians were
counted as insurgents by the Americans.
Meanwhile, relative calm held in much of the Shiite Muslim
heartland after an agreement negotiated last month by Iraq's
leading
[[Page S9108]]
Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani.
The agreement brought an end to weeks of fighting between
U.S. troops and Shiite militiamen loyal to radical cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr.
Scattered clashes continued between Al-Sadr's loyalists and
American forces in the radical cleric's Baghdad stronghold,
Sadr City.
Iraqi officials want to prevent Al-Sadr from rebuilding his
forces in Najaf. Toward that end, dozens of Iraqi soldiers
and police raided Al-Sadr's Najaf office to search for
weapons. Al-Sadr was not there at the time, and no weapons
were found, although Iraqi officials said ammunition and
mortars were confiscated from nearby houses.
U.S. and Iraqi government troops are not in full control of
several cities and areas in Iraq, including Samarra in the
north, Fallujah and Ramadi in the west, and the largely
Shiite neighborhood known as Sadr City in eastern Baghdad,
where a militia holds sway. Other cities and towns, such as
Tal, have become guerrilla bastions where the U.S.-backed
Iraqi government exerts only limited control.
In Samarra, U.S. commanders said their forces, accompanied
by members of the Iraqi police and by national guard
soldiers, drove into the city Thursday morning after gaining
assurances from local Iraqi leaders that they would not be
fired on. The local leaders said they sensed divisions within
the insurgents' ranks between those who favored some
accommodation with the Americans and those who rejected it,
and felt secure enough to issue the temporary guarantee.
U.S. soldiers and the Iraqi police then convened a meeting
of the U.S.-backed council, which chose a new mayor and
police chief. After a few uneventful hours, the U.S. soldiers
and the Iraqi police left.
However, commanders acknowledge that as many as 500
insurgents remain in Samarra. The guerrillas' preference is
to strike at smaller U.S. or Iraqi units. In classic
guerrilla style, they tend to hide their arms and blend in
among city residents when faced with larger forces.
The U.S. troops pulled out at the end of the day for lack
of a secure base to spend the night.
Maj. Neal O'Brien of the 1st Infantry Division, which
patrols four provinces north of Baghdad that includes
Samarra, said, ``We will never give up our right to maneuver
in any of our areas.''
The U.S. approach in Samarra since spring had been to allow
local leaders to work out a way to disarm or otherwise
neutralize a stubborn insurgent force that had disrupted
government and police activities in the ancient city of
200,000.
The largely Sunni Muslim population has long posed a major
challenge for U.S. forces. The city was the site of a large-
scale U.S. offensive last winter designed to flush out a
guerrilla force thought to be composed of religious
militants, anti-American nationalists and loyalists of Saddam
Hussein's former Baath Party. During that offensive, a U.S.
force of more than 3,000 soldiers also met little resistance
as the guerrillas apparently melted into the populace.
But in recent months, residents say, Samarra had fallen
back under insurgent control.
Mr. DAYTON. I yield the floor.
____________________