[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 124 (Thursday, September 29, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10650-S10652]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise once again today to comment on 
the deeply disturbing consequences of the President's misguided 
policies in Iraq. I have spoken before about my grave concern that the 
administration's Iraq policies are actually strengthening the hand of 
our enemies, fueling the insurgency's recruitment of foreign fighters, 
and unifying elements of the insurgency that might otherwise turn on 
each other.
  But today I want to focus on a different and equally alarming issue, 
which is that the Bush administration's policies in Iraq are making 
America weaker. None of us should stand by and allow this to continue.
  It is shocking to me this Senate has not found the time and the 
energy to take up the Defense authorization bill and give that bill the 
full debate and attention it deserves. Our men and women in uniform and 
our military families continue to make real sacrifices every day in 
service to this country. They perform their duties with skill and 
honor, sometimes in the most difficult of circumstances. But the Senate 
has not performed its duties, and the state of the U.S. military 
desperately needs our attention.
  The administration's policies in Iraq are breaking the U.S. Army. As 
soldiers confront the prospect of a third tour in the extremely 
difficult theater of Iraq, it would be understandable if they began to 
wonder why all of the sacrifice undertaken by our country in wartime 
seems to be falling on their shoulders. It would be understandable if 
they and their brothers and sisters in the Marine Corps began to feel 
some skepticism about whether essential resources, such as adequately 
armored vehicles, will be there when they need them. It would be 
understandable if they came to greet information about deployment 
schedules with cynicism because reliable information has been hard to 
come by for our military families in recent years. And it would be 
understandable if they asked themselves whether their numbers will be 
great enough--great enough--to hold hard-won territory, and whether 
properly vetted translators will be available to help them distinguish 
friend from foe.
  At some point, the sense of solidarity and commitment that helps 
maintain strong retention rates can give way to a sense of frustration 
with the status quo. I fear we may be very close to that tipping point 
today. It is possible we may not see the men and women of the Army 
continue to volunteer for more of the same. It is not reasonable to 
expect that current retention problems will improve rather than worsen. 
We should not bet our national security on that kind of wishful 
thinking.
  Make no mistake, our military readiness is already suffering. 
According to a recent RAND study, the Army has been stretched so thin 
that active-duty soldiers are now spending 1 of every 2 years abroad, 
leaving little of the Army left in any appropriate condition to respond 
to crises that may emerge elsewhere in the world. In an era in which we 
confront a globally networked enemy, and at a time when nuclear weapons 
proliferation is an urgent threat, continuing on our present course is 
irresponsible at best.
  We are not just wearing out the troops; we are also wearing out 
equipment much faster than it is being replaced or refurbished. Days 
ago, the chief of the National Guard, GEN H. Steven Blum, told a group 
of Senate staffers that the National Guard had approximately 75 percent 
of the equipment it needed on 9/11, 2001. Today, the National Guard has 
only 34 percent of the equipment it needs. The response to Hurricane 
Katrina exposed some of the dangerous gaps in the Guard's 
communications systems.
  What we are asking of the Army is not sustainable, and the burden and 
the toll it is taking on our military families is unacceptable. This 
cannot go on.
  Many of my colleagues, often led by Senator Reed of Rhode Island, 
have taken stock of where we stand and have joined to support efforts 
to expand the size of our standing Army. But this effort, which I 
support, is a solution for the long term, because it depends on new 
recruits to address our problems. We cannot suddenly increase the 
numbers of experienced soldiers so essential to providing leadership in 
the field. It takes years to grow a new crop of such leaders. But the 
annual resignation rate of Army lieutenants and captains rose last year 
to its highest rate since the attacks of September 11, 2001. We are 
heading toward crisis right now.
  Growing the all-volunteer Army can only happen if qualified new 
recruits sign up for duty. But all indications suggest that at the end 
of this month the Army will fall thousands short--thousands short--of 
its annual recruiting goal. Barring some sudden and dramatic change, 
the Army National Guard and Army Reserve too will miss their annual 
targets by about 20 percent, missing their targets this year by 20 
percent in terms of recruitment. GEN Peter Schoomaker, the Army's Chief 
of Staff, told Congress recently that 2006 ``may be the toughest 
recruiting environment ever.''

  Too often, too many of us are reluctant to criticize the 
administration's policies in Iraq for fear that anything other than 
staying the course set by the President will somehow appear weak. But 
the President's course is misguided, and it is doing grave damage to 
our extraordinarily professional and globally admired all-volunteer 
U.S. Army. To stand by--to stand by--while this damage is done is not 
patriotic. It is not supportive. It is not tough on terrorism, nor is 
it strong on national security. Because I am proud of our men and women 
in uniform, and because I am committed to working with all of my 
colleagues to make this country more secure, I am convinced we must 
change our course.
  As some of my colleagues know, I have introduced a resolution calling 
for the President to provide a public report clarifying the mission the 
United States military is being asked to accomplish in Iraq, and laying 
out a plan and a timeframe for accomplishing that mission and 
subsequently bringing our troops home. It is in our interest to provide 
some clarity about our intentions and restore confidence at home and 
abroad that U.S. troops will not be in Iraq indefinitely. I have tried 
to jump-start this discussion by proposing a date for U.S. troop 
withdrawal: December 31, 2006.
  We need to start working with a realistic set of plans and benchmarks 
if we are to gain control of our Iraq policy, instead of simply letting 
it dominate our security strategy and drain vital resources for an 
unlimited amount of time.
  So this brings me to another facet of this administration's misguided 
approach to Iraq, another front on which our great country is growing 
weaker rather than stronger as a result of the administration's policy 
choices, and that is the tremendously serious fiscal consequences of 
the President's decision to put the entire Iraq war on our national 
tab. How much longer can the elected representatives of the American 
people in this Congress allow the President to rack up over $1 billion 
a week in new debts? This war is draining, by one estimate, $5.6 
billion every month from our economy--funds that might be used to help 
the victims of Hurricane Katrina recover, or to help

[[Page S10651]]

address the skyrocketing health care costs facing businesses and 
families, or to help pay down the enormous debt this Government has 
already piled up.
  Not only are we weakening our economy today, this costly war is 
undermining our Nation's economic future because none of that 
considerable expenditure has been offset in the budget by cuts in 
spending elsewhere or by revenue increases. All of it--every penny--has 
been added to the already massive debt that will be paid by future 
generations of Americans.
  For years now, this administration has refused to budget for the cost 
of our ongoing operations in Iraq that can be predicted, and has 
refused to make the hard choices that would be required to cover those 
costs. Instead--instead--the President apparently prefers to leave 
those tough calls to our children.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a quick 
question?
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Could I do that in 2 minutes?
  Mrs. BOXER. Sure.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. I want to finish my statement.
  Mr. President, in effect, we are asking future generations to pay for 
this war, and they will pay for it in the form of higher taxes or fewer 
Government benefits. They stand to inherit a weakened America, one so 
compromised by debt and economic crisis that the promise of opportunity 
for all has faded. And there is no end in sight.
  In addition to that, the war will leave other costly legacies. Here 
again, it is the members of the military and their families who will 
endure the most severe costs. But even if the war ended tomorrow, the 
Nation will continue to pay the price for decades to come.
  Linda Bilmes of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard estimates 
that over the next 45 years, the health care, disability, and other 
benefits due our Iraq war veterans will cost $315 billion. We owe our 
brave troops the services and benefits they are due. We owe it to them 
and to their children and to their grandchildren to guide the course of 
this country and this economy to ensure that we are in a position to 
deliver for our veterans and for all Americans.
  I cannot support an Iraq policy that makes our enemies stronger and 
our country weaker, and that is why I will not support staying the 
course the President has set. If Iraq were truly the solution to our 
national security challenges, this gamble with the future of our 
military and with our economy--who knows?--might make sense, if that 
were the case. If Iraq, rather than such strategically more significant 
countries as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, were at the heart of the global 
fight against violent Islamic terrorism, this might make some sense. If 
it were true that fighting insurgents in Baghdad meant we would not 
have to fight them elsewhere, all the costs of this policy might well 
make sense.
  But these things are not true. Iraq is not--is not--the ``silver 
bullet'' in the fight against global terrorist networks. As I have 
argued in some detail, it is quite possible that the administration's 
policies in Iraq are actually strengthening the terrorists by helping 
them to recruit new fighters from around the world, giving those 
jihadists on-the-ground training in terrorism, and building new, 
transnational networks among our enemies. Meanwhile, the costs of 
staying this course indefinitely, the consequences of weakening 
America's military and America's economy, loom more ominously before us 
with each passing week. There is no leadership in simply hoping for the 
best. We must insist on an Iraq policy that makes sense.

  I yield to the Senator from California for a question.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. 
Feingold. I am very proud to be on his resolution which finally would 
hold this President and his administration accountable for the 
disastrous situation we find ourselves in in Iraq, a situation that has 
led to now nearly 2,000 dead, countless wounded, young people and not 
so young without limbs, without their full brain capacity. It is a 
stunning failure.
  Finally, in the Senate, we have a resolution that simply says to this 
administration: Do tell us, what is your plan? When are we getting out? 
Give us the milestones. And, what is the mission?
  I have a couple of questions I wanted to ask my friend. As my friend 
was talking, I wrote down the various missions that we have heard from 
the administration that we were supposed to have in Iraq. The first one 
was weapons of mass destruction. Remember when Secretary Rumsfeld said: 
I know where they are; I could point to where they are. No, there 
weren't any. Then they said: We have to get Saddam. He is a tyrant. We 
all agreed, he is a tyrant. Saddam is gone for all intents and 
purposes. That was the second mission. Then they said: We are going to 
rebuild Iraq, a disastrous situation over which Secretary Rice is in 
charge. I haven't seen much rebuilding. I have seen a lot of no-bid 
contracts. Then they said: We have to have an election. That is the 
next mission. They had an election. After that, everything fell apart. 
Then they said: We need to bring security. We are going to train the 
Iraqi forces. The Senator from Wisconsin and I agree with that. We want 
to see them trained--it seems to be taking forever--especially when we 
have the President saying: We will stay there as long as it takes. What 
kind of message is that to the Iraqis?
  We had a briefing yesterday. We can't discuss the details of that 
briefing, but it seemed to me there were yet other missions laid out.
  I ask my friend, does he see the situation the way I do: An ever-
changing mission in Iraq, setting the bar higher and higher with no end 
in sight is where we are at the present time?
  Mr. FEINGOLD. I thank the Senator from California. She accurately 
described the way in which we got in this situation. I called it on the 
Senate floor, in October 2002, shifting justifications. The one we 
began with, the one that sold the American people, was that somehow 
there was a connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Most 
of the American people apparently believed it because the President 
told them so at the time of the invasion. That would have been the 
ultimate justification because everybody assumed the Iraq invasion had 
something to do with that.
  Ever since that myth has been exploded, the administration has been 
trying any way, scampering any way they can to come up with other 
justifications--the obviously failed attempt to suggest the imminent 
threat of weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein, and then 6 
to 7 months later, a year later, the President suddenly announces what 
he was really trying to do was to start a domino effect. We were going 
to fight a war that was going to create a domino effect of democracy 
around the world, which is a lovely ideal and notion, but nobody 
thought that was the justification when we voted here. I am guessing 
that it wouldn't have gotten one single vote if Members thought we were 
buying into that kind of project.
  The Senator is right, not only with regard to how we got into the war 
but also with regard to how this administration is conducting the war. 
It is a mixture of so many inconsistent justifications that it doesn't 
make sense.
  I had 18 town meetings in northern and central Wisconsin, some of 
them at very conservative areas, during the August recess. These were 
places where most of the people supported the Iraq war. They came to my 
town meetings and said: Why is this happening? Why were we given false 
pretenses to get into the war, and why is it that there isn't a serious 
plan to finish the war? Because of the failure of the administration to 
handle this war in any sensible way, the very people who supported the 
war are starting to say: Let's just leave.
  So the President presents us with a false choice. He says: We have to 
stay the course. And if you don't believe in staying the course, then 
you must be for cutting and running. He is causing the movement in 
America to simply leave Iraq because of his failure of leadership.
  What our resolution does--and I thank the Senator from California for 
her cosponsorship--is modest. It just says: Mr. President, within 30 
days, could you give us a written plan that lays out the best way you 
want, without being bound to it, what is the plan, what is the mission, 
what are the benchmarks we have to achieve, by what time do you think 
we can achieve those benchmarks, and at what point and through what 
stages do you think we can begin and then complete the withdrawal of 
our American troops.

[[Page S10652]]

  I say to my friend through the Chair, I think her comments and her 
question are right on the point.
  I yield for another question.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleague for 
correcting me on the point that I missed that, yes, out of the five or 
six missions I named, I left out the very important one that he 
corrected me on, which is that there was a link between Saddam and al-
Qaida and, in fact, there was al-Qaida all over Iraq.
  The Senator and I sit on the Foreign Relations Committee. I think he 
remembers this document that I put into the Record, because I remember 
he very much wanted it, which showed that about a month after September 
11 when we were so viciously attacked by bin Laden--who, by the way, we 
were going to get dead or alive, and we need to do that--the fact is, 
the State Department in its own document said there wasn't one al-Qaida 
cell, not one, in Iraq. There were more cells in America than in Iraq, 
according to our own State Department. We have put that in the Record.

  Now, of course, it is a haven for terrorism because of this failed 
policy, this disastrous policy, this policy that is utter chaos with no 
end in sight, unless the Senate and the administration look at what my 
friend put forward, which is finally saying to the President: You need 
a mission, a mission that can be accomplished, and we need to end this 
in an orderly fashion.
  I wanted to ask my friend one more point, and then I will leave the 
Chamber. That is about the National Guard. Right now, there are fires 
raging in my home State, sadly. We have them every year at this time. 
It is heartwrenching. We need all the help we can get. We always get 
all the help we ask for. We have never had a problem. The National 
Guard is called out when it gets really out of control.
  Is my friend aware that the best equipment that the National Guard 
had at its disposal is in Iraq, not here at home? And when the people 
were crying out for help, not only were so many of the National Guard 
over in Iraq, my understanding is--and my friend can correct me--
approximately 40 percent of our troops over there are National Guard. 
That is my information. Not only that, the best equipment of the 
National Guard is over in Iraq.
  Don't our people deserve better than that so when they experience 
disasters, our National Guard can respond?
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California. The 
Senator has very nicely returned to the main point of what I was trying 
to illustrate today. We certainly agree on the problems of how we got 
into this war and our very troubled feelings about that and also the 
myriad of problems with the way the war is being conducted. But what 
the Senator from California has done is returned us to the main point I 
wanted to make today: This strategy is weakening America. I am not 
talking about some general sense. We are talking specifically about our 
military. We are talking specifically about our Army. We are talking 
specifically about our National Guard.
  Yes, we know about this in Wisconsin. We have some 10,000 Guard and 
Reserve. The vast majority of them have been called up for action 
overseas. There are serious concerns that have been reported--which, by 
the way, were beginning prior to 9/11--about equipment. It is to the 
point where my National Guard people ask me to ask the Secretary of 
Defense, Are we going to replenish these things for our National Guard? 
What is the guarantee? I received a rather weak answer, as I recall. 
The equipment needs are only at 34 percent for the National Guard--a 
dramatic decline in the last 4 years. Since 9/11, we have allowed the 
situation to become much worse in terms of equipment for our National 
Guard, whether it be for use in a foreign conflict or whether it be 
used to handle a terrorist situation domestically or whether it be used 
to help deal with one of the natural disasters that obviously can and 
do occur.
  I appreciate the Senator heightening this point. This isn't about 
opposing a war. This is about mistakes being made by an administration 
in terms of forgetting the main point of fighting terrorism and 
forgetting about the need for our military to be strong both 
internationally and to be able to help, as the National Guard must, 
domestically.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be able to 
speak as in morning business. Is that proper at this time?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes, it is. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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