[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 21 (Tuesday, March 1, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H812-H813]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          SMART SECURITY AND THE UNVARNISHED TRUTH ABOUT IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Biggert). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Madam Speaker, there are many truths about America's 
involvement in Iraq. My truth is that our policies there over the last 
2 years have been both immoral and ineffective. With nearly 1,500 
American troops killed since the fighting began and another 11,000 
injured, the time has come for a drastic change in our role in Iraq.
  Leave aside, if my colleagues possibly can, the fact that the 
President and his team misled us about weapons of mass destruction. 
Forget for a moment, if they can, that they invented out of whole cloth 
a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 tragedy. Those lives were 
bad enough. But their policies, the administration's policies, have 
also failed to achieve one of their later stated objectives of securing 
Iraq. The Bush administration is not only dishonest; I believe they are 
incompetent.
  Rather than liberating Iraq, the U.S. invasion and occupation has 
trapped the nation and its people in a cauldron of violent civil 
strife. Our presence there has not engendered gratitude but bred 
resentment in the form of vicious insurgency. It has emboldened Muslim 
extremists who hate America now more than ever. Neither Iraqis nor 
Americans nor anyone else in this world is safer because of this war in 
Iraq.
  In fact, a report came from the CIA's National Intelligence Council 
that concluded Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the most fertile 
breeding ground for terrorists. It turns out that the Bush 
administration was right in their projection that we cannot separate 
Iraq from the war on terrorism. What they did not tell us is that 
invading Iraq fulfilled those projections and strengthened the wrong 
side in the war on terrorism.
  Even since the Iraqi election, violence is making democracy a real 
long shot; and our troops, charged with somehow bringing order to the 
chaotic situation, are sitting ducks. Perhaps the President should ask 
the Iraqi people how free they feel when they must dodge bullets just 
to go to the market or visit a neighbor, when they stand by and watch 
neighborhoods being destroyed. Even in Afghanistan, which is often 
cited as a Bush success, there is evidence that the country is being 
run by warlords and drug dealers.
  To help the situation in Iraq, I have introduced H. Con. Res. 35, 
legislation

[[Page H813]]

that will help secure Iraq by withdrawing our troops, which will ensure 
that America's role in Iraq actually does make America safer. So far 27 
of my House colleagues have joined me as co-sponsors of this important 
legislation.
  My plan for Iraq is part of a larger strategy that I call SMART 
Security, which is a Sensible, Multilateral American Response to 
Terrorism that will ensure America's security by relying on smarter 
policies.
  Madam Speaker, let me be clear. We would not abandon Iraq and we 
should not. There is still a critical role for the United States in 
providing the developmental aid that can help recreate a robust civil 
society, build schools and water processing plants, and ensure that 
Iraq's economic infrastructure becomes fully viable.
  Instead of troops, we need to send scientists, educators, urban 
planners, and constitutional experts to help rebuild Iraq's fighting 
economic and physical infrastructure and help establish a robust and 
democratic civil society. We need to pursue a new approach, and we need 
to do that because it has become clear the military option is not 
working. That is not the ideological statement of someone who opposed 
the war on principle, though I am that. It is a sober assessment of the 
situation in Iraq that is now shared across the political spectrum. We 
must truly support our troops, and the right way to do this is by 
bringing them home.

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