[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 6 (Wednesday, January 26, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H222]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          SMART SECURITY AND THE CASE FOR LEAVING IRAQ, PART 2

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Issa). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, the United States invasion and occupation 
of Iraq violate America's core values of honesty, responsibility, 
security, justice and freedom. This has been a dishonest war from the 
word go. The President said he had hard evidence of weapons of mass 
destruction in Iraq. It turns out he did not. To date, no weapons of 
mass destruction have been found. The President himself has officially 
called off the hunt.
  Irresponsible behavior has been a guiding principle of the 
administration's behavior in leading the Nation to war in Iraq. 
Specifically, what has been the response of our leaders when they have 
been exposed for misleading the country, or for sending American men 
and women to their deaths without imminent threat to American security, 
or what has been the response for keeping our National Guard troops in 
Iraq for many months longer than they had agreed, or for signing off on 
orders that led to torture in American prisons?
  Our leaders do not take responsibility for their failures. Instead, 
they change the subject, make excuses, or worst of all, blame an 
underling. Not a single administration official has resigned as a 
result of the mistakes that led us into this misguided and dangerous 
war. George Tenet received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Alberto 
Gonzales and Condoleezza Rice are up for promotion, and Donald Rumsfeld 
is still the Secretary of Defense, although if he traveled to Germany, 
he could possibly be arrested as a war criminal.
  The Iraq invasion has made the Middle East a more violent and 
unstable place, and it has made America less secure at home by creating 
a terrorist breeding ground in a country that was not a haven for 
Islamic fundamentalists before we invaded it. It seems too ironic to be 
true, but after our Nation was attacked on 9/11 by Islamic 
fundamentalists, the Bush administration's response was to bomb and 
kill civilians in one of the few countries in the Middle East that was 
actually inhospitable to Islamic fundamentalists.
  Speaking of justice, there is no justice in an operation that has 
caused the deaths of over 1,400 Americans and untold thousands of 
Iraqis for the purely ideological reason that our leader did not like 
their leader. Nor do we serve the cause of freedom by killing innocent 
people in a country that did not ask for our help, by destroying a 
nation's roads, schools and hospitals; and in the process we have 
created a playground for Islamic fundamentalists.
  Freedom is very important to Americans, and I believe that the 
President's recent inaugural address made a mockery of the word 
``freedom.'' He should ask the people of Iraq, many of whom have 
suffered because they lost a loved one or had a friend maimed by 
foreign bullets, just how free do they feel today.
  Some say that we have a responsibility to the people of Iraq to keep 
our troops there, that we not abandon them. This belief misses the 
point. Our very presence in Iraq is the cause of much of the violence.
  We have a moral responsibility to leave in order to stem the 
violence. We owe this to the people of Iraq, who have been killed by 
the thousands and thousands. We owe it to our troops who are sitting 
ducks for terrorists. That is why later today I will introduce 
legislation calling for a withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq.
  In the 108th Congress I also introduced a SMART Security Resolution 
For the 21st Century, which calls for a sensible, multilateral American 
response to terrorism. Adopting a smart approach to foreign policy will 
help us avoid the many mistakes that have characterized the war in 
Iraq.
  By supporting my call to bring the troops home, we will send a 
message to the President, one, asking that he develop and implement a 
plan to begin the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq; two, 
develop and implement a plan for the reconstruction of Iraq's civil and 
economic infrastructure; three, convene an emergency meeting of Iraq's 
leadership, Iraq's neighbors, the United Nations, and the Arab League 
to create an international peacekeeping force in Iraq and to replace 
U.S. military forces with Iraqi police and national guard forces to 
ensure Iraq's security; and, finally, take all necessary steps to 
provide the Iraqi people the opportunity to completely control their 
own internal affairs.
  Mr. Speaker, it is time we pursued a SMART security strategy for 
America, and we must do this by withdrawing our troops from Iraq. It is 
not too late to make the smart choice, the right choice, the choice to 
bring our troops home.

                          ____________________