[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 114 (Thursday, September 14, 2006)]
[House]
[Page H6622]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE CRISIS IN IRAQ

  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of 
turn.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from 
California is recognized for 5 minutes.
  There was no objection.
  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, Last Sunday Vice President Cheney appeared 
on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' and provided a vivid example of George 
Santayana's admonition that ``those who do not learn from the past are 
doomed to repeat it.''
  After 3\1/2\ years of bloody combat; after our Nation has lost more 
than 2,600 of our military's finest; after thousands more of our brave 
men and women have been wounded; after we have spent more than $300 
billion; with no end in sight to the insurgency and Iraq plunging into 
civil war; and after finding no weapons of mass destruction, the very 
basis of that war, the Vice President told the American people that 
``if we had to do it over again, we'd do exactly the same thing.''
  Never mind that the next day the Washington Post published an article 
on the front page entitled ``Situation called Dire in West Iraq: Anbar 
is Lost Politically, Marine Analyst Says,'' which revealed that the 
Marine Corps Chief of Intelligence had recently completed a report that 
concluded the prospects for securing Iraq's western Anbar province are 
``dim'' and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to 
improve the political and social situation there. According to Vice 
President Cheney, ``if we had to do it over again, we'd do exactly the 
same thing.''
  Never mind that our invasion of Iraq was predicated on the need to 
neutralize Saddam Hussein's active nuclear weapons program and destroy 
his stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. But no weapons were 
ever found. According to Vice President Cheney, ``if we had to do it 
over again, we'd do exactly the same thing.''
  Never mind that retired senior military officers, former U.S. 
diplomats, and a wide range of military and foreign policy experts see 
our efforts to pacify Iraq as undermined by a host of mistakes the 
administration has made in the prosecution of the war, including the 
failure to bring enough troops to secure the peace and the catastrophic 
decision to stand down the Iraqi army. According to our Vice President, 
``if we had to do it over again, we'd do exactly the same thing.''
  Never mind that our troops went into battle without adequate body 
armor and up-armored vehicles. According to the Vice President, ``if we 
had to do it over again, we'd do exactly the same thing.''
  Never mind that countless billions have been spent on reconstruction 
with little to show for the effort, many billions unaccounted for. 
According to Vice President Cheney, ``if we had to do it over again, 
we'd do exactly the same thing.''
  Earlier this year House and Senate Democrats unveiled our ``Real 
Security'' agenda that lays out a blueprint for a new direction in 
Iraq. Our plan calls for the establishment of full Iraqi sovereignty, 
provides for the responsible redeployment of our forces to better 
protect our troops and to facilitate the transfer of authority, and 
provides oversight, vigorous oversight, of the prosecution of the war 
and the reconstruction of Iraq. This new direction in Iraq was rejected 
by the Republican majority in the House, which has endorsed the 
President's stay-the-course policy in Iraq, a policy which amounts to 
nothing more than more of the same.

                              {time}  1830

  The majority in this House is complicit in this failed policy through 
its failure to oversee the war and to hold accountable those officials 
who have failed our troops and the American people. That failure of 
oversight and the need to hold people accountable has plagued Iraq from 
the very beginning, and because this Congress, this Republican 
Congress, refuses to hold the President to account, we keep making the 
same mistakes over and over again.
  On April 26 of this year, in the International Relations Committee, I 
asked the administration witnesses in our first hearing on Iraq whether 
they could name any individual who had been held accountable for the 
myriad failures in prosecuting the war on Iraq. The witnesses were 
silent for an interminable 14 seconds before the Assistant Secretary of 
State replied, ``That is way above our pay grade.'' The answer, 
however, is no one has been held accountable.
  That lack of oversight, the absence of accountability, the stubborn 
refusal to acknowledge that mistakes have been made has brought us to 
the precipice in Iraq. But as the Vice President revealed so clearly 
last week, the senior officials in our government still blithely 
insist, If we had to do it over again, we would do exactly the same 
thing.
  Our troops in Iraq, their families here at home, the families of 
those who have served deserve better than a stubborn insistence that 
all is well when it is not, that no mistakes have been made when there 
have been many, that no correction in course will be made because to do 
so would acknowledge error. That is unacceptable.
  The Democrats will provide a new direction in America. The Democrats 
will provide a new direction for our national security. There is no 
time more than now when a new direction is necessary.

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