[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 4 (Tuesday, January 9, 2007)]
[House]
[Page H125]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  No matter what you call it, another escalation in the war in Iraq is 
wrong. I will oppose in both word and deed any effort to send more 
troops. We've tried it before. It will not just mean more American 
casualties. It will bring more violence to the Iraqis while adding to 
the burden on our already strained Armed Forces. We should start 
instead bringing our troops home, not sending more into harm's way in 
what the President's advisers have already admitted is a political 
decision, not a strategic one. Let's take advantage of the new 
congressional leadership to change direction in what Americans know is 
our most important issue, ending the war in Iraq.
  We should start with the resolution the Bush administration used to 
authorize this disaster. Knowing what we know now, the authorization of 
force bears little relation to reality. Instead, the committees of 
jurisdiction should use their upcoming hearings to craft new 
legislation that will mean a withdrawal of our troops as well as guide 
our continued involvement in Iraq until that withdrawal is complete. I 
will introduce legislation later this month that would provide exactly 
that sort of guide by refocusing our efforts on political, diplomatic 
and economic strategies.
  Most importantly and most immediately, Congress has clear authority 
through its power of the purse. We must demand accountability for how 
money is spent, who is getting how much and for what purpose. We need 
to target war profiteering. There are too many accounts of contractors 
who have taken taxpayer dollars and abandoned our troops under fire and 
the Iraqi people in need. We need an entity like the Truman Commission 
during World War II to aggressively investigate contractors, punish war 
profiteers and recover misspent funds by canceling any failed or 
fraudulent contracts. By redirecting as much of the money as possible 
to projects run for and by Iraqis, we can repair that damaged country 
as cost effectively as possible.
  We must also reconsider the unprecedented privatization of our 
military effort. The outsourcing of these basic support functions in 
Iraq has left contractors unaccountable to the American people, immune 
from military law and has cost the taxpayers much more than we've 
needed to spend.
  While we're at it, Congress should end the outsourcing of our work. 
It should be embarrassing to the Republican leadership that it took the 
Iraqi Study Group to provide the oversight and accountability that 
Congress should have done these past 4 years.
  We need to work to make sure the political discussion surrounding 
Iraq is not just more civil but more effective. We need to make it 
possible to debate this issue in terms of facts and the policy 
consequences and not hide behind the cloud of politics. In the 2002, 
2004 and 2006 election cycles, there was lots of talk about Iraq, but 
people didn't tell the truth. Instead, the issue was manipulated for 
political purposes. We must resist the efforts to reduce this 
discussion to how it will impact the next election rather than how we 
got into this mess and how we are going to get out of it. In all of 
this conversation, we need to be dealing with the long-term security of 
the United States.
  We must look at the President's plan to escalate the war in Iraq in 
the context of those violent fundamentalists around the world that 
would do us harm, threats of genocide in Darfur and chaos in Somalia, 
nuclear proliferation, global warming and the loss of America's 
influence in the world. In none of those areas does escalating the war 
in Iraq make the world a safer place.
  The American people would welcome Congress doing our job right. Only 
then can we turn this disaster around and provide the security for 
families in America and around the world.

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