[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 6 (Thursday, January 11, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H393-H394]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       IRAQ AND THE WAR ON TERROR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, after 9/11, the House of Representatives 
voted in unprecedented near unanimity with one dissenting vote to 
invade Afghanistan and go after the perpetrators of 9/11, Osama bin 
Laden, al Qaeda, and also their host, the Taliban. The U.S. Forces with 
real allies quickly accomplished that mission, displacing the Taliban, 
Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda.
  Unfortunately, because of the administration's diverting its 
attention already toward Iraq and failing to send adequate troops into 
Afghanistan and overly relying upon untrustworthy Afghan warlords, 
Osama bin Laden escaped, as did the one-eyed Omar of the Taliban, al-
Zawahiri, his deputy.
  They are still at large. They are still planning attacks in the 
United States. In fact, they are resurgent. For the first year since 
our invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban didn't shrink back into 
Pakistan for the winter. They have set up sophisticated forward bases 
in Southern Afghanistan.

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  We are hearing a plea for reinforcements from the NATO forces, from 
U.S. troops on the ground. And what is the President's reaction? 
Remember the President, ``Osama bin Laden, dead or alive; dead or 
alive, we are going to hunt him to the ends of the Earth''? He does not 
talk about that anymore, does he? The Taliban, Afghanistan. He is 
totally focused on his failed policies in Iraq, where there was no al 
Qaeda, where there were no weapons of mass destruction, where there was 
no Osama bin Laden.

                              {time}  1530

  And now the President, as part of an attempt to paper over his failed 
strategy yet once again and pretend there is possibly a military 
solution, he is going to take U.S. troops out of southern Afghanistan 
and send them to Baghdad, despite the warnings that the one-eyed Omar 
and the Taliban intend to try and retake Kandahar against the pathetic 
NATO troops that are defending that region, hobbled by extraordinarily 
restrictive rules of engagement.
  There is a possibility that there will be a new sanctuary and there 
will be a resurgence in place for the terrorists to go, but it is not 
Iraq. The President, in his blind obsession with Iraq, is failing to 
see the real threats against the United States of America. The 
President should not, and this Congress should not, support an 
escalation of the war in Iraq, sending 21,500 troops in Iraq, some of 
whom are vitally needed in Afghanistan who will be displaced as part of 
that number because we have taxed our military so heavily.
  This is wrong policy for Iraq, wrong policy for America, and wrong 
policy for the much-touted war in Iraq. We must refocus our efforts on 
Afghanistan, and we must work more broadly for a solution in Iraq, 
following many of the recommendations of the Hamilton-Baker report 
rejected by the President in favor of doing the same thing again and 
again and again.
  This is not a change in policy. It is the same failed policies of the 
past.

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