[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 72 (Thursday, June 8, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H3631-H3635]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                DEMOCRATS PLAN FOR A WAY FORWARD IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff) is 
recognized for half the time until midnight as the designee of the 
minority leader.
  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, there have been too many dark days in Iraq 
of late, but today is not one of them. The removal of Abu Musab al 
Zarqawi is a welcome event.
  Zarqawi was a blood thirsty thug and an indiscriminate killer of 
innocent men, women and children. All Americans join in congratulating 
the American military and the Iraqi people for their success in 
tracking, finding and eliminating the most vicious terrorist in Iraq.
  It is too early to predict what the effect of the elimination of 
Zarqawi will have on the counterinsurgency effort that the Iraqi and 
coalition forces are engaged in.
  On the one hand there is ample historical evidence that eliminating 
terrorist and insurgent leaders does not necessarily cripple their 
movements. New leaders rise up to take their places. In the Iraqi case, 
however, Zarqawi's form of jihad, which has resulted in the slaughter 
of so many innocent civilians has alienated most Iraqis and helped to 
foster reported back-channel negotiations between the U.S., the Iraqi 
Government and some of the insurgent groups over the past few months.
  Whether the confluence of Zarqawi's death and the completion of the 
new Iraqi cabinet can accelerate the prospects for some kind of more 
open negotiations remains to be seen. Especially as the sectarian 
violence that Zarqawi sought has continued to grow in recent months.
  Even as we celebrate Zarqawi's death and recall the horrors he 
perpetrated, the videotaped beheadings of helpless hostages, the mass 
casualty suicide bombings of Shiite mosques, and the horrific 
destruction of the UN headquarters, we cannot turn away from the grim 
reality, that the war the President declared over in the spring of 2003 
has been bloodier, costlier, longer and more difficult than the 
administration anticipated or planned for.
  We need a new way forward in Iraq, and that is what we would like to 
talk about tonight. The Democratic ideas for a new way forward in Iraq 
are part of an overall effort to reconfigure America's security for the 
21st Century, a plan we call Real Security.
  Earlier this spring, Members of our party from both the House and the 
Senate unveiled a comprehensive blueprint to better protect America and 
restore our Nation's position of international leadership.
  Our plan, Real Security, was devised with the assistance of a broad 
range of experts, former military officers, retired diplomats, law 
enforcement personnel, homeland security experts and others, who helped 
identify key areas where current policies have failed and where new 
ones were needed.
  In a series of six special orders, my colleagues and I have been 
sharing with the American people our vision for a more secure America. 
The plan has five pillars, and each of our special order hours have 
been addressing them in turn: Building a 21st Century Military, Winning 
the War on Terror, Providing for Our Homeland Security, A Way Forward 
in Iraq, and the Achievement of Energy Independence.
  Tonight we address a New Course in Iraq, to make 2006 a year of 
significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with the Iraqis 
assuming primary responsibility for securing and governing their 
country with a responsible redeployment of U.S. forces.
  Democrats will insist that Iraqis make the political compromises 
necessary to unite the country and defeat the insurgency, promote 
regional diplomacy and strongly encourage our allies and other nations 
to play a constructive role.
  I have been to Iraq three times to visit our troops there, and I have 
spent time with our wounded here and in Germany. They have done 
everything we have asked of them, and they have done it magnificently. 
Whatever success we have had in Iraq, every village that was secured, 
every public works project that was completed, every school that was 
reopened, is due to the efforts of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and 
marines.
  But, Mr. Speaker, these heroes are still being killed and wounded 
daily. Over 2,450 American troops have been killed and thousands more 
have been injured. American taxpayers are paying approximately $194 
million a day for the war, according to the CBO. That is more than $1 
billion a week.
  A recent Congressional Research Service report puts the current cost 
of continued operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at close to $10 billion 
a month, with most of that money going to Iraq.
  This is a conflict that has come to grief in so many ways. In the 
fall of 2002, Congress voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq 
because of the threat that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical 
and biological weapons, and because we were told he had an active 
nuclear weapons program.
  If you go back and look at the debate in the House and Senate, this 
was a decision taken by the Congress to prevent Iraq from acquiring and 
using or transferring nuclear weapons.
  Months later as American forces pushed across the Kuwaiti frontier 
and into Iraq, we were told by the President that our troops were on a 
hunt for weapons of mass destruction. Delivering the Iraqi people from 
the brutality of Saddam Hussein was a noble act, but the promotion of 
democracy in Iraq was not our primary reason for going to war.
  Similarly, we knew that the Shiite majority had suffered terribly 
under the Ba'athist regime, and freeing them from the oppression of the 
Sunni minority was an added benefit of the invasion. But reordering the 
ethnic balance of political power in Iraq was not our primary purpose 
for going to war.
  Soon after the fall of Baghdad, it became clear that many of the 
prewar assumptions that had guided the President and his advisors were 
wrong. There were no chemical or biological weapons. There was no 
nuclear program. And while many Iraqis celebrated the ouster of Saddam 
Hussein, they did not line the streets of Baghdad to greet our troops 
with flowers. In fact, within days, there emerged the beginnings of 
what would be an organized, deadly insurgency that would quickly put an 
end to General Tommy Frank's plan to pare down the 140,000 troops in 
Iraq in April of 2003 to 30,000 by September of 2003.
  In recent months, the nature of the struggle in Iraq has changed yet 
again. Long-simmering ethnic tensions which had been suppressed under 
Saddam's totalitarian regime have threatened to tear the country apart.
  While the full-scale civil war that many feared in the wake of the 
bombing of Askariya mosque in Samarra has not come to past, not yet, 
most observers believe the country is currently in the grip of a low-
level civil war that could erupt into full-scale conflict at any time.
  As first, much of the sectarian violence was perpetrated by Sunni 
insurgents who saw continuing violence and instability in Iraq as their 
best hope to gain power in a country dominated by Shiia Muslims.
  Shiite political factions have responded by creating militias, and 
these have become more active in targeting Sunnis over the past few 
months. In recent weeks I have been concerned by media reports that 
Shiite militias have been deploying to Kirkuk, Iraq's third largest 
city, in a bid to forestall any attempt by Kurds to assert control over 
this major center of Iraq's oil-rich north.
  In Baghdad, Shiite units, some of them nominally under the control of 
the Ministry of Interior, have acted as death squads, and the streets 
of the capital have become a dumping ground for bodies.
  We have a moral obligation to do what we can to avoid having Iraq 
spiral into all-out civil war. But now is the time for Iraqis 
themselves to decide whether they wish to be one country. That is the 
decision we cannot make for them.
  Accordingly, the first element of the Real Security Plan for Iraq 
calls for

[[Page H3632]]

the United States to take the necessary steps to ensure that 2006 is a 
year of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty.

                              {time}  2245

  There is a broad consensus among experts here and abroad that Iraq's 
future will be determined politically and not by force. The formation 
of a permanent Iraqi government, one that will have power, legitimacy 
and vision, to assume primary responsibility for securing and governing 
the country is a necessary precondition to ending the insurgency, 
preventing civil war and allowing large scale reconstruction to begin.
  Consequently, our role in Iraq must become more political and less 
military for if there is one thing that Iraqis of every religious, 
political and ethic stripe can agree on, it is that they do not want 
foreign troops in their country indefinitely.
  The second element of the Democratic Real Security plan for Iraq is a 
responsible redeployment of our troops during the course of 2006 so 
that we are not drawn into sectarian conflict, and so that Iraqis are 
forced to take primary responsibility for securing and governing their 
country. The process of training Iraqi security forces has gone more 
slowly than many had hoped and few Iraqi units are capable of taking a 
leading role in combating the insurgency and remain almost wholly 
dependent on coalition forces for logistical support.
  We must redouble our efforts to train Iraqi forces in order to allow 
for the responsible redeployment of American troops without a 
consequent loss of security in the areas we leave. A responsible 
redeployment of American coalition forces will have to be done in 
stages to build greater Iraqi sovereignty and control over security, 
not civil war.
  In the first phase of redeployment, I believe our forces should be 
gradually withdrawn from urban centers where their mere presence in 
large numbers has earned the animosity of the local population. Our 
troops should be moved to smaller cities where reconstruction is 
supported by the local population and to remote bases where our troops 
will be able to support Iraqi units if necessary but will not become a 
buffer between warring sects bent on killing each other.
  Over time, these troops will be withdrawn from Iraq altogether and 
redeployed outside the country, either in the region or back to the 
United States. We should publicly declare that the U.S. does not seek 
to maintain a permanent military presence in Iraq and many of us have 
co-sponsored legislation to prevent the establishment of bases which 
can only serve as a catalyst for the insurgency and for foreign 
jihadis.
  A redeployment of American troops cannot succeed if the Iraqis 
themselves are not willing to find the political solution to counter 
the forces that threaten the unity of the country. There is to doubt 
that Iraq's ongoing sectarian strife has been exacerbated by the 
protracted struggle among and inside Iraq's political factions over the 
formation of a permanent government.
  The real key to a better future for the Iraqi people and the third 
element of the Democratic Real Security plan for Iraq is the promotion 
of political compromise to unite the country. The recent formation of a 
national unity government by the prime minister is a positive step. 
While Zarqawi's death has grabbed most of the headlines today, the 
prime minister's announcement that he has filled the crucial vacancies 
in the interior defense and national security ministries may prove more 
important to Iraq's future, which will be determined politically and 
not by force.
  The Iraqi government must demonstrate to its people that it can 
actually bring Iraq's rival factions together in a common effort to 
confront the foreign jihadis and bring the insurgents into the 
political process. This is the best hope for maintaining the unity of 
Iraq. But Mr. Speaker, we can not do it alone.
  American soldiers, American diplomats and American reconstruction 
experts are shouldering almost the entire burden in Iraq. This is 
unfortunately a problem wholly of our making. The President made little 
effort to bring others on board before we went into Iraq. And after the 
fall of Baghdad, he rebutted an offer by the United Nations to assume a 
central role in rebuilding the country.
  Finding a way to internationalize the struggle to stabilize Iraq is 
the fourth element of the Democratic Real Security plan for Iraq. It is 
not surprising our allies and others are reluctant to send their 
solders and contractors to help us. It is dangerous and we have not 
been amenable to listening to the suggestions of others. Unfortunately, 
the situation in Iraq has deteriorated to the extent that the world 
must reengage if only because the alternative is too horrible to 
contemplate. At a minimum, our allies should be willing to assume a 
greater role in training Iraqi security forces, as well as provide 
long-promised economic support.
  Finally, the last element of the Real Security plan is the need to 
hold the administration accountable for its conduct of the war. More 
than any other variable under the control of Congress, our failure to 
perform this oversight has been a major factor contributing to the 
difficult situation in Iraq.
  The failure of oversight and the need to hold accountable people that 
are responsible for those failures has plagued the Iraq war from the 
beginning. And because this Congress, this Republican-controlled 
Congress refuses to hold the President to account, we keep making the 
same mistakes over and over again.
  For years, the administration and majority tried to cow into silence 
anyone who dared to question the conduct of the war by calling them 
unpatriotic. It is not disloyal to ask these questions. Oversight is a 
core responsibility of Congress. The great strength of a democratic 
system with built-in checks and balances is that mistakes are caught 
and corrected. Every Member of this House, Republican and Democrat, 
wants a stable and representative Iraqi government. But, Mr. Speaker, 
we cannot hope to change course in Iraq until and unless we are willing 
to acknowledge mistakes, until we hold the administration accountable 
and force change.
  Devising and implementing a successful end game in Iraq will be 
difficult, but the President's open ended commitment to remain in the 
country is untenable and unwise. The American people want Iraq to 
succeed and for a representative government there to survive and lead 
to a better future for the Iraqi people, but that success requires a 
new direction.
  I now yield to two of my colleagues, my fellow co-chairs of the 
Democratic Study Group on National Security their thoughts on the way 
forward in Iraq. First, I would like to turn to Mr. Israel of New York 
who has been a great leader on this issue, who is the Chair of the 
Democratic Task Force on National Security. I yield to the gentleman 
from New York.
  Mr. ISRAEL. I thank my friend from California and particularly I want 
to thank him for his strong and wise leadership on national security 
issues.
  As the gentleman mentioned he and our colleague from Atlanta, 
Georgia, Mr. Scott, and I co-founded the Democratic Study Group on 
National Security Policy, which advocates for a long and smart 
military, which believes in policy that are robust and visionary when 
it comes to our national security.
  I have the great honor, not just being a Member of Congress, but 
serving on the House Armed Services Committee. And I was in Iraq just a 
month ago. It was my second visit as a member of the Armed Services 
Committee. And when I was there I had the sense that we were getting 
close to finding al-Zarqawi. He was still on the loose but we were 
getting closer, and I am glad that we finished the job. This is a guy 
who relished beheadings. This is someone who enjoyed car bombings. This 
is someone who killed Americans who killed, Sunnis, who killed Shi'ia, 
who killed Kurds. And so I believe it is an important day and it is 
good news that while we have many struggles ahead this one struggle no 
longer exists.

  But I think it is very important for us to focus on the future. While 
I was in Iraq I had the opportunity to meet with Prime Minister Maliki 
and President Talabani and General Casey and his troops. All of those 
people were involved and should take credit for what happened today.
  The questioning now faces what is next. The gentleman talked about 
our plan for Iraq. The fact that 2006 should

[[Page H3633]]

be a year of transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, that we need a 
responsible redeployment of U.S. forces, that we need to promote Iraqi 
political compromise to unite the country, encourage our allies to play 
a constructive role, hold the Bush administration accountable. And 
there is one more thing that we must do that I know my colleagues and I 
agree completely on. And that is to make sure that our troops continue 
to have everything they need, because despite the fact that al-Zarqawi 
has been removed, there are going to be other al-Zarqawis in the world. 
There are going it be others who enjoy beheadings and car bombings. And 
for as long as long as they exist, we are going to need the 
capabilities of meeting and defeating them.
  That is why I was so distressed when my constituents woke up this 
morning to this front page in our Long Island newspaper, Newsday. The 
front page headline, ``Blood clot bandages, frontline shortage, some 
troops calling home to ask for life saving dressings.''
  By the way, I would say to my friends from Georgia and California, 
this story is under a story about how Ann Coulter visited my district 
having just attacked 9/11 widows as being witches and harpies. After 
Ann Coulter attacked 9/11 widows, I have about a hundred of them in my 
district, comes to my district and attacks them. Under that story is 
this story about potential shortages of blood clot bandages.
  Let me share with my colleagues what this story says. ``Despite Army 
order that frontline medics get special clotting bandages, soldiers say 
they're still needed.'' It begins with this lead. ``Nine months after 
an Army order that all combat orders would get life saving clotting 
bandages to curb bleeding deaths, some troops in Iraq are still calling 
home, asking friends and families to supply them. Despite Army 
assurances that there are plenty of bandages to go around. Soldiers 
have written to say they have not found their way to all those on the 
front lines, and the manufacturer under contract with the Army 
acknowledged last week that early production problems may have spurred 
a shortage.''
  Now, let me be clear on this. We have been working with the Army and 
we will continue to work closely with them. They are trying to get to 
the bottom of this and that is their obligation. I appreciate their 
responsiveness to this report. But we cannot afford continued reports 
like this three years after the invasion.
  It is unfair that Ms. Doreen Kenny, who lost her job, Jacob Fletcher, 
in Iraq, one of the first Long Islanders to be killed in action, has to 
have her photograph in this story with the quote, ``If I can prevent 
one knock at the door of a military family, I will do all I can to 
prevent them from living through the heartbreak I have had to live 
through.''
  Why is she in this story? Because Doreen Kenny, who lost her boy, is 
mailing this critical medical equipment to our troops in Iraq. That is 
not what she should be having to do right now.
  So I know we will continue as Democrats to ensure that when we go to 
war we do not go with the Army we have, as Secretary Rumsfeld said, but 
with the supplies they need. That those of us who believe that we have 
to draw a line against totalitarianism understand that we have to make 
sure our supply lines are adequately equipped. That we cannot afford to 
send soldiers into hostility and then read reports that they are 
calling home asking for blood clotting bandages.
  I want to thank the gentleman for his leadership. We will continue to 
pursue this vitally important plan for Iraq, but I know that at the 
centerpiece of those plans is the understanding that we have to protect 
the protectors and defend the defenders, and that is what Democrats are 
doing in the United States Congress today.
  Mr. SCHIFF. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for sharing the 
experience of your constituent. I think each of us has sat down with 
troops returning from Iraq and heard the stories of the lack of 
lifesaving equipment that they have had to cope with. I had lunch with 
a guardsman from my district a couple of weeks ago who told me during 
the year he was in Iraq, the Humvees they were riding in had no doors, 
and they had to jerry-rig sheets of plywood separated by sacks of sand 
or concrete, what we call hillbilly armor, to protect themselves as 
they went from base to base, asking each other, why are we having to do 
this?
  And when we consider all of the misspent and unaccounted for billions 
of reconstruction dollars and how many coagulant bandages that would 
pay for or body armor or uparmored vehicles, I think it is the case of 
going to war with the leadership you have, not the leadership you would 
like. And I thank the gentleman. If the gentleman has time, we can have 
a colloquy later on but let me turn to my other colleague from Georgia, 
Mr. Scott, one of our great leaders on national security issues, and I 
yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Thank you so much and to my good friend, Mr. 
Israel. What a pleasure it is to serve, the three of us, as co-chairs 
of our Democratic Group on National Security and providing leadership 
for this Nation on this critical area, and also letting the American 
people know that Democrats stand, foremost, for national security. Our 
history, our legacy speaks to that.
  As we have counted time and time again, every time we have had a 
national crisis, Democrats have paved the way and brought us through, 
from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Harry Truman, John Fitzgerald 
Kennedy. Who could be more strong than at the Bay of Pigs, at the 
missile crisis in Cuba, with the Soviet Union in the Cold War. We have 
been in the forefront in every aspect of protecting this country and we 
are at the forefront now.
  It is such a pleasure and I am just very proud to be here with you. I 
want to pick up on that theme because while we all salute the killing 
of al-Zarqawi, we are proud of that, we are proud of our military.

                              {time}  2300

  We salute them for having done a remarkable job, but I think it is 
very important for us not to get too caught up in that as much as it is 
very important for us to look at this Iraq situation from the 
standpoint of the soldier, from that person that is on the front lines.
  Like the two of you, I have been to Iraq. I have been over into the 
war zone twice. I have been into the European theater. I have been into 
Afghanistan. I have been on the front lines with our troops. I have 
eaten with them. I have been there and I have talked with them, and I 
have looked them in the eyes and they have looked me in the eyes. We 
have been able to see and to be able to feel one another's passion and 
their pain.
  I am committed, as the two of you are, to make sure that we speak for 
the soldier, and this is what I want to do this evening. I want to talk 
about our military, and I want to talk about them from the standpoint 
of the sacrifices that our men and women in uniform are making.
  Most recently, we had in the news the disturbing story about the 
marines and about what happened over there, but I want you to know that 
this is one soldier here, this is one congressman, who is going to not 
come to any conclusions, because no matter what the situation is on 
that battlefield, where our marines, where our soldiers are, they did 
not choose to go over there. They did not choose to go over there with 
bad equipment, undermanned and in the rotation cycle that they have 
that has put tremendous strain on our military.
  Many of our marines, many of our soldiers, are over there not on 
their second tour, not even on their third tour. Some are on their 
fourth tour of duty. I talked with them. That is not right, and it is 
not fair.
  I think as we talk tonight we need to talk about the strain that this 
Iraqi situation is placing on our military so that when we judge our 
military, let us judge them right. Let us judge them with the hills and 
valleys and the mountains that they have got to go through over there.
  I want to talk about just for a second that nearly all of the 
available combat units in the United States, Army and the Army National 
Guard and the Marine Corps, have been used up in the current operations 
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  Every available combat brigade from the active duty Army has already 
been to Afghanistan and Iraq at least once for a 12-month tour. Many 
are now in

[[Page H3634]]

their second or third tours of duty, and approximately 95 percent of 
the Army National Guard's combat battalions and special operation units 
have been mobilized since 9/11, and short of full mobilization or a new 
presidential declaration of national emergency, there is little 
available combat capacity remaining in the Army National Guard.
  All active duty Marine Corps units are being used on tight, tight 
rotation schedules, 7 months deployed, less than a year home to rest or 
recess, then another 7 months deployed, and all of the Marine Reserve 
combat units have been mobilized.
  The point I am making is that the decision to go to war is one thing. 
The other thing is you never make that decision and you send on a 
mission that is not clearly defined, that has been moving and shaking. 
Let us review for a moment just what our soldiers, just what our 
military has been asked to do.
  First of all, the mission was to go and find weapons of mass 
destruction, based upon faulty information and sometimes false 
information purposefully, for whatever purpose. We know all that now. 
We did not know it then, but we sent our military into that, and we 
sent our military in with not enough manpower. Seventy percent of the 
generals said we do not have enough manpower. The one person with the 
level of credibility, combat experience in this administration, Colin 
Powell, made the statement, We do not go to war without the size of the 
military we need to do the job. You go with massive force.
  Then secondly, once there were no weapons of mass destruction, the 
mission changed to go to find Saddam Hussein. We did that.
  Then to set up a free government. We did that, all under great, great 
obstacles.
  And then the test, to reconstruct the country. That was not the 
mission of our Army.
  So, as we sit back and as we applaud this great accomplishment today 
with al-Zarqawi, let us not forget the soldier. Let us not forget the 
difficult and challenging and meandering, constantly changing mission, 
not having the resources, going into dung heaps, going into landfills 
to get body armor.
  This country, and the very just passionate story that Steve Israel 
talked about on the front page of the Newsday and the Long Island 
newspaper today, America deserves better. I tell you one thing, they 
are going to get better because we in the Democratic group on national 
security, we are going to make sure of it. We are going to hold this 
administration accountable. We are going to point in a new direction, 
and we are going to give the American people the kind of strong, 
forceful, national security that they need and can be proud of.
  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia.
  I think most of the American people really do not have a firsthand 
sense of the kind of sacrifice that our troops are making, which is 
nothing short of extraordinary, with the multiple deployments that you 
mentioned, with the uncertainty for their families of when they will 
come home, if they will come home and in what condition they will come 
home, the economic sacrifices the families make.
  One of the concerns I have is not only the problem making sure that 
there is enough coagulant bandages while they are there, but what about 
when they come home? Our VA system is already over capacity. The 
administration is talking about closing Walter Reed. I do not know how 
that can be done. Every time I have been there it is been brimming with 
patients.
  We, I do not think, have even begun to think about the demands on our 
health care system for veterans. This young Guardsman that I mentioned 
earlier, he told me that he still has to resist the impulse to drop to 
the deck when he hears someone close the door behind a Civic. There is 
something about the closing of a door behind a Civic that sounds a lot 
like a mortar going off at 2,000 meters. He said he was pretty well-off 
in Iraq; he was not one of the people who had to bust down doors every 
day and go through that kind of stress.
  Imagine the mental health care needs, the physical health care needs. 
I do not think we are prepared yet to meet them, and I want to ask my 
colleague from New York, a member of the Armed Services Committee, 
someone who is a military historian and studied the kind of strain we 
are placing on our active duty and our reserve, what are your thoughts 
on this subject?
  Mr. ISRAEL. Well, I thank the gentleman for the question. You know, 
every Member of Congress prides themselves on the work we do with 
respect to veterans case work. I know in my district we have two people 
devoted exclusively to trying to work with veterans, get them their 
retroactive payment, get them their medals.
  We secured over $2 million in my district in back payments for our 
veterans, but those are Vietnam veterans. Some of these are World War 
II veterans, Korean veterans. This country is just now catching up to 
people who were in the military theater 40 years ago. Just catching up 
now to those people.

  Can you imagine what our situation is going to be where we now have a 
multitude, a new generation of veterans coming back with post-traumatic 
stress disorder and other very serious physical and psychological 
problems, and we have to say to them we are sorry, we know we sent you 
to the front, but now we have got to balance the budget on your backs 
because we have run out of money? Just cannot do it as a result of the 
fiscal policy of the past 6 years.
  When the gentleman and I were elected, we had a $5.6 trillion 
surplus. We could have paid for the war in Iraq and then paid for 
health care for every single soldier that went, so that they did not 
have to go without the potential of coagulant bandages. So when they 
came home, they came home to a country that would take care of them.
  Now, we have got an $8 trillion debt, and we have to make painful 
cuts. The other side has forced us to cut back on those services, 
forced veterans to dig deeper into their pockets.
  Mr. SCHIFF. The gentleman and I were talking just this morning, all 
three of us, about the need to sacrifice, the need to have leadership 
in this country, and ask the American people to make a sacrifice.
  Right now, the people sacrificing are the people in uniform and their 
families, but the rest of us can contribute, too. I know you have been 
at the forefront of calling for our national sacrifice, and we could 
start by balancing the budget so that these young soldiers, sailors, 
marines and airmen do not come back, in addition to having to try to 
put their lives back together, have that huge national debt hanging 
over their heads.
  Mr. ISRAEL. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, there is a lot 
of talk by the administration about the global war on terror and 
America's fight on the global war on terror. 133,000 of our troops are 
fighting the global war on terror. They are the ones who have been made 
to engage in the sacrifice. They are the ones who have been uprooted 
from their families.
  These two gentlemen on the front page of my daily newspaper, they are 
fighting the global war on terror. The rest of us are watching it on 
television. America can do better than that. I refuse, and I know the 
gentleman from California and the gentleman from Georgia should refuse 
to be the first generation of Americans in history to say let everybody 
else do it, we will just sit back and relax. We will pass a permanent 
repeal of the death tax or the estate tax which may cost $300 billion, 
and then have the temerity to tell these people on the front page of 
Newsday, sorry, we cannot afford your supplies, we cannot afford to 
take care of you when you come home. I do not want to be the first 
generation of Americans to balance the budget on the backs of someone 
who is on his back in this photograph.
  We have an obligation if we are going to fight the Zarqawis of the 
world, something I believe we should do, to make sure that those who 
are doing the fighting are protected and make sacrifices at home that 
save their lives abroad.
  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I have to yield to the gentleman from 
Georgia.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. That is exactly the point we were making 
earlier in the debate early last week in terms of these tax cuts. I 
mean, we are here and this administration last week

[[Page H3635]]

prides itself at a time when our soldiers are making these kinds of 
sacrifice, at a time that this administration will stand in the way of 
the concurrent receipts bill, and forcing our veterans to have to 
choose if they get injured or they get a wound in the battlefield, and 
they have to retire from the service, they have to choose between their 
retirement pay and their disability pay.
  This administration is standing in the way of correcting that, and at 
the same time will ask for tax cuts for the top 1 percent of the most 
wealthy people in this country, on the backs of not treating our 
veterans right, on the backs of not increasing the military widows' pay 
or giving the death benefits that we need or giving the military 
service people the raise that they need.
  This is why I was just so astounded at the glee that came from the 
Republican administration in passing a tax cut at a time of war, of 
great sacrifice. Never before in this history has that occurred.
  Mr. SCHIFF. If I could ask of the gentleman from Georgia, prior to 
the Memorial Day weekend, you shared a short anecdote about meeting one 
of your constituents in Iraq. Can you tell us about that because I 
think it so characterizes the sacrifice we are talking about.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. This was a remarkable experience I had with the 
soldier in Iraq, and we had to make that choice of staying that night 
and putting our own selves in greater danger because, you know, going 
over there, you cannot fly up at night. You have to go by the roads, 
but we made that choice, and I am so glad because it gave me the 
experience of a lifetime.
  As we were in Camp Victory in Baghdad and we were gathered there, and 
this soldier came up and was just hugging me. I was hugging him, tears 
falling down his eyes, tears falling down my eyes, and we were just 
squeezing each other. He said something to me I will never forget. He 
said, Congressman Scott, when I am hugging you, it is like hugging a 
piece of home. I almost get choked up every time that happens.
  I am so glad that God gave me that experience. I am so glad we went 
there, and like other soldiers, a while later, that soldier died. That 
is the kind of sacrifice, and I went over there and looked in the eyes.
  Let me tell you another experience. When I was in Afghanistan and I 
went over there to Afghanistan, at the time when you remember the 
debate was over that if we had had this kind of body armor, that 
several thousand marines that have died or got wounded or would have 
been saved, that story came out. The Pentagon had given that report.

                              {time}  2315

  So that was fresh on my mind when I was sitting there with this one 
unit. And in each one of the squads there is a sniper. There is an 
armor guy, an artillery guy, but each one has a sniper who the whole 
troop depends upon. And I started asking about the body armor and they 
started going around saying, yeah, we have all our armor on, but our 
sniper here, he will not wear the neck armor to protect himself from a 
head wound or a neck wound that would be almost fatal. And I asked him, 
I said why. He said, I won't wear that because it hurts my agility to 
be able to move my head to protect my troops. We have had many snipers.
  That kind of valor, that kind of courage, that is the kind of 
sacrifice that we are talking about at a time when we have not asked 
others in this Nation to make that sort of sacrifice.
  Mr. SCHIFF. I am sure that both my colleagues have had the experience 
of visiting our troops in the hospital in Ramstein, Germany, and here 
in Washington. Their thoughts are with their colleagues they left 
behind. They want to get back to their troops to make sure they are 
there for their buddies.
  I had one soldier who was so concerned, could I do something about 
the fact that one of the people in his battalion really deserved 
recognition for what he had done, and since he wasn't there to make the 
report this other soldier would not get the recognition they deserved. 
This is what he was worried about as he lay in the hospital.
  I yield to the gentleman from New York.
  Mr. ISRAEL. I spent some time this evening with the gentleman and 
with one of our best generals, and he was telling the story of visiting 
with a critically wounded soldier in a military hospital and walking 
out with that soldier's mother. And the mother said, General, my son is 
not sleeping at night. And the General said, well, of course he is not 
sleeping at night, look what he has been through. She said, no, 
General, he is not sleeping because he is up all night thinking about 
the fact that his unit is still in Iraq and he is worried about them.
  That is the sacrifice that we are talking about and the dedication 
and the professionalism, and we have an obligation to those men and 
women to protect them.
  If the gentleman would allow me to make a concluding point. This 
front page newspaper tells the story of contrast, and the same contrast 
is played out on the floor of the House frequently. You have got this 
front, top of the newspaper that says ``Ann the Ripper Brings Campaign 
Against 9/11 Widows to Long Island,'' and then you have the rest of the 
page devoted to the possibility of front-line shortages of critical 
medical equipment. These guys get less so that Ann Coulter, who writes 
a book calling 9/11 widows witches and harpies, who will make a lot of 
money off the proceeds of that book, can get a bigger tax cut.
  How is that fair in America today? How is that just? How does that do 
justice to these people? It doesn't. We can do better. The Democrats 
will do better. We understand the need to fight and to use hard power 
around the world to fight totalitarianism and to fight terrorism, but 
if you are going to take on the fight, you got to take it on with the 
right supplies. And that is what we are about.
  Mr. SCHIFF. I want to thank both my colleagues for joining me this 
evening and helping to further elucidate the Democratic plan for the 
way forward in Iraq, for talking about the sacrifice our troops are 
making, for being there for our troops, and also raising the call that 
this be a shared sacrifice in the war on terror; that we not force 
those who have borne the battle to look out for themselves and to pay 
off our national debt when they get back; that we heed the injunction 
of Lincoln that we ``look after him who has borne the battle and his 
widow and his orphan.''
  I want to thank you again for all your leadership.

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