[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 78 (Friday, June 16, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H4178-H4179]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE WAR IN IRAQ

  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I request unanimous consent to speak out of 
order and assume the time of Mr. Burton.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from 
Tennessee is recognized for 5 minutes.
  There was no objection.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I requested this Special Order to read a 
statement that I earlier placed in the Record during the debate on the 
Iraq war resolution.
  I did not request time during the debate because it was obvious that 
the chairmen controlling the time, all good friends of mine, wanted 
only speakers who support the war, and I did not want to place them in 
an uncomfortable position.
  I did not request time from the Democrats because many of my 
colleagues in the minority were using this debate in a bitterly 
partisan way. Surely, war should be the last thing that should become 
partisan.
  Yet 80 percent of the House Republicans, including me, voted against 
the bombings in Bosnia and Kosovo when President Clinton was in the 
White House. I believe 80 percent of Republicans would have opposed the 
war in Iraq if it had been started by President Clinton or Gore, and 
probably almost all the Democrats would have then been supporting it, 
as they did the bombings in Bosnia and Kosovo.
  Much of the resolution that was just passed by this House contains 
language that everyone supports, especially the praise for our troops. 
Our troops do a great job everywhere they are sent. And it is certainly 
no criticism of them to criticize this war.
  In August of 2002, 2 months before Congress voted for the war in 
Iraq, Dick Armey, then our Republican majority leader, in a speech in 
Iowa said, ``I don't believe America will justifiably make an 
unprovoked attack on another nation. It would not be consistent with 
what we have been as a Nation.''
  Jack Kemp wrote before the war, ``What is the evidence that should 
cause us to fear Iraq more than Pakistan or Iran? Do we reserve the 
right to launch a preemptive war exclusively for ourselves, or might 
other nations such as India, Pakistan or China be justified in taking 
similar action on the basis of fears of other nations?''
  Mr. Kemp said, based on the evidence he had seen, there was not ``a 
compelling case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.''
  William F. Buckley wrote that if he had known in 2002 what he knew 
then in 2004, he would have been against the war. Last year he wrote 
another column against the war, saying, ``A point is reached when 
tenacity conveys not steadfastness of purpose, but misapplication of 
pride.''
  The very popular conservative columnist, Charley Reese, wrote that 
this war was ``against a country that was not attacking us, did not 
have the means to attack us, and had never expressed any intention of 
attacking us. And for whatever real reason we attacked Iraq, it was not 
to save America from any danger, imminent or otherwise.''
  Many years ago, Senator Robert Taft expressed a traditional 
conservative position: ``No foreign policy can be justified except a 
policy devoted to the protection of the American people, with war only 
as the last resort and only to preserve that liberty.''
  Millions of conservatives across this Nation believe this war was 
unconstitutional, unaffordable and worst of all, unnecessary. It was 
waged against an evil man, but one who had a total military budget only 
two-tenths of 1 percent of ours.
  We are not going to be able to pay all our military pensions, civil 
service pensions, Social Security, Medicare and all the other things we 
have promised if we are going to turn the Department of Defense into 
the Department of Foreign Aid and attempt to be the policeman of the 
world.
  This is contrary to every traditional conservative position on 
defense and on huge deficit spending. The conservative columnist 
Georgie Ann Geyer wrote, ``Critics of the war against Iraq have said 
since the beginning of the conflict that Americans, still strangely 
complacent about overseas wars being waged by a minority in their name 
will inevitably come to a point where they will see they have to have a 
government that provides services at home, or one that seeks empire 
across the globe.''
  Mr. Speaker, a few days ago I found out that a rating service called 
voteview.com which studies all of our votes from the last Congress, 472 
votes I think it was, from last year, in this Congress, rated me as the 
sixth most conservative Member of this body. And yet I am steadfastly 
opposed to this war and I have been since the beginning.

[[Page H4179]]

  Mr. Speaker, we need to start putting our own people first once again 
and bring our troops home, the sooner the better. And when somebody 
says we can't cut and run, I surely hope they don't mean that we should 
stay there forever.

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