[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 82 (Thursday, June 22, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H4498-H4499]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        IRAQ AND THE PATH TO WAR

  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of 
order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentlewoman from 
California is recognized for 5 minutes.
  There was no objection.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, stop the presses; we found Iraq's weapons 
of mass destruction. Or at least that is what some Members of Congress 
would have the American public believe. They stake this claim on an 
unclassified portion of an intelligence report that addressed the 
finding of 500 weapons shells of old, inert chemical agents from the 
Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. The shells had been buried deep within the 
ground near the Iranian border and forgotten by Iraqi soldiers.
  Yesterday, intelligence officials made clear that these deactivated 
shells were not the so-called weapons of mass destruction that the Bush 
administration used as the basis for going to war in Iraq. Mr. Speaker, 
a few weapons shells from a two-decade-old war does not a weapons of 
mass destruction program make.
  No matter how you slice it, no matter how you package the story, 
Saddam Hussein simply didn't have a weapons of mass destruction program 
in Iraq; yet, there are those who would stop at nothing to prove they 
existed. It is as if finding the weapons of mass destruction would 
somehow validate an unjust and unnecessary war that has been mismanaged 
from the day it was first shamefully conceived.
  Mr. Speaker, do a few weapons shells from a two-decade-old war 
justify the 2,511 American soldiers who have been killed in Iraq? Do 
they justify the more than 18,000 soldiers who have been wounded 
forever? How about the countless others who have been traumatized

[[Page H4499]]

by psychological and physical injuries or the tens of thousands of 
Iraqi civilians who have been killed?
  Speaking of U.S. troops killed in Iraq, the President's new press 
secretary recently called the 2,500th American casualty ``just a 
number.''
  But the American people know that this soldier and the other 2,510 
soldiers who have been killed aren't just numbers; they are sons, they 
are daughters, they are husbands and wives, they are fathers, they are 
mothers; and each of them was willing to lay down their own life for 
what they believed to be their duty as part of the U.S. military.
  These brave men and women deserve a foreign policy worthy of their 
sacrifice. Unfortunately, their civilian superiors at the Pentagon and 
at the White House have let them down in many ways, but particularly by 
referring to any troop, dead or alive, as just a number.
  Instead of trying to justify a tremendously wrong-headed war by 
pointing to decades-old shells buried in the ground, the Bush 
administration ought to start engaging in a little something called 
diplomacy. By going on a diplomatic offensive, the United States will 
shift its role from that of Iraq's military occupier to its 
reconstruction partner. We need to engage the United Nations to oversee 
Iraq's economic and humanitarian needs. At the same time, we must 
publicly renounce any desire to control Iraqi oil and ensure that the 
United States does not maintain lasting military bases.
  Engaging in diplomacy will give Iraq back to the Iraqi people, 
helping them rebuild their economic and physical infrastructure, 
creating Iraqi jobs, and ending the humiliation that corresponds with 
another country maintaining 130,000 plus occupying troops on their 
soil.
  A strategy emphasizing the diplomacy is in line with an approach I 
call SMART security. SMART stands for Sensible, Multi-Lateral, American 
Response to Terrorism. Instead of throwing our military weight around 
the world, SMART security utilizes multilateral partnerships, regional 
security arrangements, and robust inspection programs to address the 
threats of weapons of mass destruction.
  Mr. Speaker, to be able to address the true threats we face as a 
Nation, we need to retract ourselves from the very conflict that is 
damaging our national security on a daily basis, and there is one and 
only one, important way to begin this process. For the sake of our 
soldiers, for the sake of their families, for the sake of our very own 
national security, it is time to stop sacrificing lives and limbs. It 
is time to stop spending billions of dollars on this war, and it is 
time to bring our troops home.

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