[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 120 (Wednesday, September 29, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9869-S9871]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             POLICY IN IRAQ

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I thank the leader and the leadership. I 
know the matters we have before us are of great importance and urgency. 
So is the matter about which I will address the Senate.
  By any reasonable standard, our policy in Iraq is failing. We are 
steadily losing ground in the war. Even after

[[Page S9870]]

9/11, it was wrong for this President or any President to shoot first 
and ask questions later, to rush to war and ignore or even muzzle 
serious doubts by experienced military officers and experienced 
officials in the State Department and the CIA about the rationale and 
justification for the war, and the strategy for waging it.
  We all know that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. We have known 
it for more than 20 years. We are proud, very proud, of our troops for 
their extraordinary and swift success in removing Saddam from power.
  But as we also now know beyond doubt, Saddam did not pose the kind of 
immediate threat to our national security that could possibly justify a 
unilateral, preventive war without the broad support of the 
international community. There was no reason whatsoever to go to war 
when we did, in the way we did, and for the false reasons we were 
given.
  The administration's insistence that Saddam could provide nuclear 
material or even nuclear weapons to al-Qaida has been exposed as an 
empty threat. It should have never been used by President Bush to 
justify an ideological war that America never should have fought.
  Saddam had no nuclear weapons. In fact, not only were there no 
nuclear weapons, there were no chemical or biological weapons either, 
no weapons of mass destruction of any kind.
  Nor was there any persuasive link between al-Qaida and Saddam and the 
9/11 attacks. A 9/11 Commission Staff Statement put it plainly:

       Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that 
     any ties existed between al-Qaida and Iraq. We have no 
     credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on 
     attacks against the United States.

  The 9/11 Commission Report stated clearly that there was no 
``operational'' connection between Saddam and al-Qaida.
  Secretary of State Colin Powell now agrees that there was no 
correlation between 9/11 and Saddam's regime. So does Secretary of 
Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Nevertheless, President Bush continues to 
cling to the fiction that there was a relationship between Saddam and 
al-Qaida. As the President said in his familiar Bush-speak, ``The 
reason that I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq 
and Saddam and al-Qaida is because there was a relationship between 
Iraq and al-Qaida.''
  That's the same logic President Bush keeps using today in his 
repeated stubborn insistence that the situation is improving in Iraq, 
and that we and the world are safer because Saddam is gone.
  The President and his administration continue to paint a rosy picture 
of progress in Iraq. Just last Wednesday, he referred to the growing 
insurgency as ``a handful of people.'' Some handful.
  Vice President Cheney says we're ``moving in the right direction,'' 
despite the worsening violence. Our troops are increasingly the targets 
of deadly attacks. American citizens are being kidnapped and brutally 
beheaded.
  But Secretary Rumsfeld says he's ``encouraged'' by developments in 
Iraq.
  Our colleague Senator Lindsey Graham doesn't buy that, and he has 
said so clearly: ``We do not need to paint a rosy scenario for the 
American people.''
  Neither does our colleague Senator Hagel, a Vietnam veteran and a 
member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As he stated 
unequivocally last week, ``I don't think we're winning . . . The fact 
is, we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble in Iraq.''
  The National Intelligence Estimate in July, although not yet made 
public, made this point as well--and made it with such breathtaking 
clarity that for the good of our country, officials leaked it to the 
press. The New York Times said the estimate ``spells out a dark 
assessment of prospects for Iraq.'' The same Times report and other 
reports, the National Intelligence Estimate outlines three different 
possibilities for Iraq through the end of next year. The worst-case 
scenario is that Iraq plunges into outright civil war. The best-case 
scenario--the best case--is that violence in Iraq continues at current 
levels, with tenuous political and economic stability.
  President Bush categorically rejected that analysis, saying the CIA 
was ``just guessing.'' Last week, he retreated somewhat. He said he 
should have used ``estimate'' instead of ``guess.''
  In other words, the best case scenario between now and the end of 
2005 is that our soldiers will be bogged down in a continuing quagmire 
with no end in sight. President Bush refused to give the time of day to 
advice like that by the best intelligence analysts in his 
administration, but the American people need to hear it.
  We learned in yesterday's New York Times that the President was also 
warned by intelligence officials before the war that the invasion could 
increase support for political Islam and result in a deeply divided 
society in Iraq, a society prone to violent internal conflict. Before 
the war, President Bush received a report that warned of the possible 
insurgency.
  It is listed on the front page of the New York Times. Just to mention 
part of the story:

       ``The same intelligence unit that produced a gloomy report 
     in July about the prospects of growing instability in Iraq 
     warned the Bush administration about the potentially costly 
     consequence of an American-led invasion 2 months before the 
     war began,'' Government officials said Monday. The 
     assessments predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq 
     would increase support for political Islam and would result 
     in a deeply divided Iraq society prone to violent internal 
     conflict. The assessment also said a war would increase 
     sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist 
     objectives, at least in the short run.

  That is the warning this President had, but he rushed headlong into 
the war with no plan to win the peace. Now, despite our clear failures, 
the President paints a rosy picture. Look at today's national 
newspapers. The Washington Post, on the front page, says:

       Growing Pessimism on Iraq. A growing number of career 
     professionals within the national security agencies believe 
     that the situation in Iraq is much worse, and the path to 
     success much more tenuous, than is being expressed in public 
     by top Bush administration officials. . . .
       ``While President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. 
     Rumsfeld and others have delivered optimistic public 
     appraisals, officials who fight the Iraqi insurgency and 
     study it at the CIA and State Department and within the Army 
     officer corps believe the rebellion is deeper and more 
     widespread than is being publicly acknowledged,'' officials 
     say.
       People at the CIA ``are mad at the policy in Iraq because 
     it's a disaster, and they're digging the hole deeper and 
     deeper. . . .''
       ``Things are definitely not improving.''

  When is the President going to level with the American people?
  In the New York Times today--these are in the last 2 days, Mr. 
President--on the front page it says: ``Baghdad,'' and this is a 
different story:

       Over the past 30 days, more than 2,300 attacks by 
     insurgents have been directed against civilians and military 
     targets in Iraq, in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every 
     major population center outside the Kurdish north, according 
     to comprehensive data compiled by a private security company 
     with access to military intelligence reports and its own 
     network of Iraqi informants.
       The sweeping geographical reach of the attacks . . . 
     suggests a more widespread resistance than the isolated 
     pockets described by the Iraqi government officials.

  The outlook is bleak, and it is easy to understand why. It is because 
the number of insurgents has gone up. The number of their attacks on 
our troops has gone up. The sophistication of the attacks has gone up. 
The number of our soldiers killed or wounded has gone up. The number of 
hostages seized and even savagely executed has gone up.
  Our troops are under increasing fire. More than 1,000 of America's 
finest young men and women have been killed. More than 7,000 have been 
wounded. In August alone, we had 863 American casualties. Our forces 
were attacked an average of 70 times a day, higher than for any month 
since President Bush dressed up in a flight suit, flew out to the 
aircraft carrier, and recklessly declared, ``Mission accomplished'' a 
year and a half ago.
  The President, the Vice President, the National Security Council, 
Secretary Rumsfeld, and other civilian leaders in the Pentagon failed 
to see the insurgency that took place last year and that began to 
metastasize like a deadly cancer. How could they have not noticed?
  Perhaps because they were still celebrating their ``mission 
accomplished.''
  For 2 years, terrorist cells in Iraq have been spreading like cancer. 
Any doctor who would let that happen to a patient would be guilty of 
malpractice.

[[Page S9871]]

In many places in Iraq today, it is too dangerous to go out even with 
guards. The streets are so dangerous that some parents are apparently 
keeping their children home from school, afraid they will be kidnapped, 
or worse, along the way.
  The State Department does not attempt to conceal the truth about the 
danger, at least in its travel warnings. Its September 17 advisory 
states that Iraq remains very dangerous.
  At the end of August, a bloody 3-week battle in Najaf ended with an 
agreement that U.S. troops would give up the city. Fallujah and now 
other cities are no-go zones for our troops, presumably to avoid even 
greater casualties, until after the election.
  Those are not the only areas where we have lost control. Last Friday, 
Secretary Powell said:

       We don't have government control, or government control is 
     inadequate, in Samarra, Ramadi, Erbil and a number of other 
     places.

  We continue to use so-called precision bombing in Iraq, even though 
our bombs cannot tell whether it is terrorists or innocent families 
inside the buildings they destroy.
  What is helping to unite so many Iraqi people in hatred of America is 
this emerging sense that America is unwilling, not just unable, to 
rebuild their shattered country and provide for their basic needs. Far 
from sharing President Bush's unrealistic rosy view, they see close up 
that their hopes for peace and stability are receding every day.
  Inevitably, more and more Iraqis believe that attacks on American 
forces are acceptable, even if they would not resort to violence 
themselves. For every mistake we make, for every innocent Iraqi child 
we accidentally kill in another bombing raid, the ranks of the 
insurgents climb, and so does their fanatical determination to stop at 
nothing to drive us out.
  An Army reservist described the deteriorating situation this way:

       For every guerrilla we kill with a smart bomb, we kill many 
     more innocent civilians and create rage and anger in the 
     Iraqi community. This rage and anger translates into more 
     recruits for the terrorists and less support for us.

  The Iraqi people's anger is also fueled by the persistent blackouts, 
the power shortages, the lack of electricity, the destroyed 
infrastructure, the relentless violence, the massive lack of jobs and 
basic necessities and services.
  By any reasonable standard, our policy is failing in Iraq. The 
President should level with the American people. He should take off his 
rose-colored glasses, understand the truth, and tell the truth. The 
American people and our soldiers in Iraq deserve answers to the 
questions they have about the war: Will President Bush come to the 
Presidential debate tomorrow prepared to answer the hard questions? 
Will he admit that we are on a catastrophic path in Iraq? Will he admit 
that we rushed to a $200 billion war with no plan to win the peace? 
Will he offer a concrete plan to correct our course?
  We are steadily losing ground in the war. No amount of campaign spin 
can obscure those facts. We have to do better. November 2 is our 
chance. This President had his chance in Iraq. We deserve a new call, 
and I believe we will have it on November 2.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith). The Senator from Arizona has 14 
minutes 15 seconds.

                          ____________________