[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.

                          ____________________