[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 23 (Tuesday, February 28, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H423-H424]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   STUCK IN THE MIDDLE OF A CIVIL WAR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, we are engaged in a great civil war. 
However, not our civil war but the Iraqis' civil war. We are caught in 
the middle of it. And there are some people who say that we do not have 
a plan, the Democrats have no plan.
  Well, today Jack Murtha sent around again to us a Dear Colleague. 
That is a method by which we in the House talk to one another; we let 
our colleagues know what we think or what is going on. Jack sent one 
around with his plan to pull the troops out of Iraq. Nobody is paying 
any attention to Jack Murtha. They make fun of him as not being a 
patriot or something but they are missing the point. We are deeper and 
deeper and deeper in this war and there is no end.
  Now, the American people have no excuse, nor does the Congress have 
any excuse for not knowing what we are into, because they put out from 
the Pentagon every year something called the ``Quadrennial Defense 
Review.'' That is to tell us what we are going to do for the next 4 
years. They have changed the language. They are not going to call it 
the war on terror anymore. It is now called ``The Long War.'' And the 
one just put out and presented to the Congress outlines plans for 20 
years into the future.
  This administration has no intention whatsoever to pull out of Iraq 
or to pull the bases out of Iraq, or to do anything as sensible as what 
Jack Murtha

[[Page H424]]

has laid in front of the President. Worse than that, they are going to 
increase this. They are looking beyond Afghanistan and Iraq.
  It is in the editorial today in The Guardian, which is a newspaper 
from England: ``Looking beyond Iraq and Iran battlefields, U.S. 
commanders envisage a war unlimited in time and space against global 
Islamic extremism. `The struggle may well be fought in dozens of other 
countries simultaneously and for many years to come.' ''
  How are they going to do that? Very simply. They are going to 
continue to spend us into debt. There will not be a dime to fix what is 
going on in New Orleans or the health care system or the educational 
system or anything else.
  Listen to what is in that report. They want 15 percent more special 
forces, an extra 3,700 people in black operations, in PsyOps and civil 
affairs units. That is an increase of 33 percent. They will have people 
to run in and go and run these countries. They want nearly double the 
number of unmanned aerial drones.
  Now, consider what an aerial drone is. That is something you take off 
in this country or take off somewhere, you fly over a country and 
somebody thousands of miles away says, drop the bomb over there at 
Seventh and Vine.
  Now, consider what we are planning. We are planning to invade 
countries from the air without even being there. It will be like war 
games, like kids sitting in the front room with their little board 
games. That is what we are talking about. We are talking about taking 
our Trident nuclear submarines and refitting them, not to shoot up 
nuclear missiles, but to send up regular missiles. So they will pull 
alongside a country and fire a bunch of rockets into the country and 
they will fix them. This is what is going on. And America is sitting 
quietly by and watching this happen.
  We are allowing the President and a very small number of people, Mr. 
Speaker, to make decisions. We have a Vice President who says he can 
now leak secret material anytime he figures he can use it. Use it to 
get us into another war. There are an awful lot of people on this 
floor, Mr. Speaker, who are very worried about the next 6 months in 
Iran because there is an election coming. And the only way you can get 
the people to vote the Republicans back in is by making them afraid. 
This is a vote of confidence on George Bush. And the people will have 
to vote ``no'' to get rid of them.

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