[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 159 (Tuesday, December 13, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H11335]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, with great fanfare last week and very belatedly, 
the President unveiled a document called A Plan For Victory in Iraq, 
and he said that this was a declassified version of the longstanding 
military strategy in Iraq.
  Now, help to review that strategy: The initial strategy based on 
unrealistic assumptions by Mr. Wolfowitz, Mr. Rumsfeld, and others was 
that our troops would be welcomed as liberators, we would be drawn down 
to 40,000 troops within a few months, and that the Iraqis would be able 
to pay for their rebuilding themselves. Of course, all these things 
were horribly, horribly wrong. A number of us have called to remove Mr. 
Rumsfeld for more than a couple of years now, but he is still there. So 
we would assume that the President condones the incredible mistakes 
that he has made which have caused many, many American lives.
  Now, with his support slumping into the 30s on his execution of the 
war in Iraq, the President has decided to shift gears. Now, that would 
be good if this was really a declassified version of a credible 
military plan for victory and return of our troops home from Iraq. 
Unfortunately, the White House and its folks do not quite understand 
high technology and the Internet, and by clicking on this, you could 
find out who really wrote it. It was not written by a military 
strategist, it was not written at the Pentagon; it was written by a 
political science professor named Peter D. Feaver from Duke University, 
and his specialty is polling and public opinion on military conflicts. 
He has a theory that Vietnam could have continued if only the American 
people had been given a vision that we were headed toward victory, and 
he is now testing that theory by writing this document which the 
President presented as an actual declassified version of a military 
document. It is not. It is a political construct based on a theory of a 
political science professor from Duke University who the President has 
named to the National Security Council. So the dissembling continues 
here for the American people.
  We want a real plan on how we are going to bring our troops home from 
Iraq. We do not want any more dissembling, we do not want any more 
Pollyannas. The President seems in his recent speeches to be admitting 
to the numerous mistakes that were made, but if we look at this 
document and the way it has been presented, they just made another 
grievous mistake for the American people. In fact, the general in 
charge in Iraq, Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, top military 
official in charge of training Iraqi troops, he surprised some 
reporters by saying that the first time he saw our strategy for victory 
in Iraq was the day it was released to the press. So this 
administration is still failing to create a clear vision.
  I and others have proposed that the President should negotiate with 
the newly elected Iraqi government after the elections on a withdrawal, 
or enhance their credibility, their legitimacy. I think it would also 
begin to remove a crutch which they are using, which is the U.S. forces 
in Iraq. They are not settling their differences legitimately between 
the Sunnis, the Shiites, and the Kurds, and of course many predicted 
that before the war, but the administration also glossed over that. And 
they will not as long as the U.S. is there, and the Sunnis in 
particular resent the U.S. presence. So if we negotiated that sort of 
an agreement with them and had a timeline to draw down and remove our 
troops and stand up the Iraqis, I believe that then the insurgency 
would abate, as do many others, including others in the military who 
have said that in fact it is our forces that are the kindling for many, 
other than the foreign fighters who are there, and then soon the Iraqis 
would turn on the foreign fighters and hopefully then reclaim their own 
country. So I am very saddened to learn that this is yet one more 
deception by this administration in this sorry chapter in American 
history.

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