[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 6 (Thursday, January 11, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S413-S415]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        A CHANGE IN IRAQ POLICY

  Mr. REED. Mr. President, last evening President Bush spoke about 
Iraq. His speech represented perhaps a change in tone but not a 
fundamental change in strategy, and the American people were looking 
for a fundamental change in strategy. They were particularly looking 
for this change based upon the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. 
These are distinguished Americans who have dedicated themselves to 
public service, bipartisan individuals who thoughtfully and carefully 
looked at the situation in Iraq and made a series of proposals, most of 
which the President apparently ignored.
  The American people are deeply concerned about the course of our 
operations in Iraq. They are incredibly supportive, as we all must be, 
of the soldiers, the marines, the sailors, the airmen and airwomen who 
are carrying out this policy, but they are deeply concerned. One of the 
things that has characterized the President's approach to Iraq for so 
many years has been the discussion of what I would describe as false 
dichotomy--false choices. You can recall, in the runup to the conflict 
in Iraq, the President said we have two choices--invade the country, 
occupy it indefinitely, or do nothing. Of course, those were not all 
the choices.
  We had the ability to interject U.N. inspectors to do the things 
which we thought were important, which is to identify the true status 
of weapons of mass destruction--and that was rejected out of hand. We 
had diplomatic options. We had limited military options. If, as was 
suggested, there were terrorists lurking in the Kurdish areas, we could 
have used the same approach as we used a few days ago in Somalia, a 
preemptive targeted strike, targeted on those whom we had identified as 
terrorists. All of that was rejected.
  Then the President undertook a strategy which I think was deeply 
flawed, which has led us to a situation now where the emerging threat 
of Iran is much more serious. Iran has seen its strategic position 
enhanced by the Bush strategy.
  Of course, we know now the incompetence of the occupation of Iraq, 
the decisions made in Washington about debaathification, about 
dismantling the Iraqi Army, about spending so many months in denial of 
the spreading insurgency have led us to this day. After all of that, 
the American people were looking for something more than a so-called 
surge.
  I say so-called because this is not a surge. This is a gradual 
increase in troops--20,000 troops approximately in the Baghdad area, 
and additional Marine forces in Al Anbar Province. It is gradual 
because our Army and Marine Corps are so stretched that they could not 
generate an overwhelming force in a short period of time. In fact, due 
to the policies of this administration, we lack an adequate strategic 
reserve. Our Army Forces who are not deployed to Iraq are, in so many 
cases, unready principally because of equipment problems, to rapidly 
deploy. That I think is a stunning indictment of this administration.
  But this gradual escalation is not, I think, going to accomplish the 
goal and objective that the President talked about. One of the critical 
aspects of this is that even though 20,000 troops will represent 
billions of dollars of additional expense and put a huge strain on the 
Army and Marine Corps, it is probably inadequate to the task of a 
counterinsurgency operation in a city such as Baghdad, a city of 
roughly 6 million people. Lieutenant General David Petraeus who has 
been nominated to take over the operations in Iraq, replacing General 
Casey, spent the last several months coauthoring a new field manual on 
counter-insurgency, and one point they make in this field manual is 
that counterinsurgency operations require a great deal of manpower.
  At a minimum, the manual suggests 20 combat troops for every 1,000 
inhabitants. That would mean Baghdad, with roughly a population of 6 
million people, would require, according to the manual, 120,000 combat 
troops. The additional 20,000 troops the President is suggesting will 
hardly make that total of 120,000 combat forces. I know there will be 
Iraqi forces there, but those forces have proven to date to be less 
than reliable. They are motivated, not so much by a military agenda but 
by sectarian agendas. They are often overruled by their political 
masters in the Iraqi Government.
  So as a result, the increase of forces is probably inadequate to 
accomplish the mission the President wants. That is not according to 
some subjective view; it is based upon the best thinking of the best 
minds in the Army and the Marine Corps. For that reason alone, the 
President, I think, has to ask himself after the speech, Why am I doing 
it?
  The other huge cost is not just in terms of money, in terms of stress 
on

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the regular Army and Marine Corps, but inevitably we are going to have 
to reach out, once again, to our National Guard, those men and women 
who have served so well, the citizen soldiers we call upon, again. They 
will receive an additional burden to bear. Again, probably not in 
sufficient numbers with a 20,000 deployment to achieve and guarantee 
success.
  The other factor here, too, is it will literally take the pressure 
off Iraqi forces and Iraqi political leaders to do the job that they 
must do. The issues in Iraq, the issues of counterinsurgency are 
fundamentally more political than they are military. That is what we 
are seeing today in Iraq. It requires political will. It requires 
political competence to succeed. That will and confidence must be the 
Iraqis' primarily, not that of the United States.

  What I think is happening in Iraq today is this Government is 
essentially a Shia government. They feel they are winning. They are 
accomplishing the goals they won't articulate but that seem to be 
obvious from the pattern of their behaviors: to marginalize the Sunnis 
so they never again will be in a position of dominating Iraq, 
consolidating Shia power in the south of Iraq, using probably the model 
of the Kurds in the north. If you go to Iraq, the area which is the 
most successful, prospering, is the Kurdish area. If you look at it and 
ask why, they have their own militia, they have their own virtual 
autonomy, they have access to oil, and they are doing quite well.
  Again, that is what the Shia intend for themselves. That, of course, 
leaves the Sunnis in an area where they face an existential conflict. 
If things continue as they are today, they will be absolutely and 
totally marginalized in Iraqi society. The Shia, still harboring fears 
after years and years of domination and horrific tyranny by Sunni 
leaders, are unwilling to compromise.
  Unless we can forge some type of reasoned compromise, it is very 
likely the future of Iraq is one of political fragmentation, if not 
formal disintegration. I think the best and perhaps the only leverage 
we have as a nation is to suggest to Shia leaders that we are not going 
to give them an open-ended commitment.
  I was pleased last evening to hear for the first time the President 
say something my colleague Carl Levin has been stressing for almost 2 
years now, a simple statement by the President to the effect that there 
is not a blank check to the Iraqi Government. I fear those perhaps are 
just words because in the same speech he is talking about increasing 
our military forces there, increasing our support to the Iraqi security 
forces. That is where we have our leverage. I don't think the President 
is quite yet willing to use that leverage. More importantly, until we 
do exert that leverage, the milestones the President talked about--the 
milestones which were announced months ago by the Iraqis and still are 
unfulfilled--will remain unfulfilled.
  The political issues have not yet been resolved by the President. 
Without political cooperation and political commitment by the Iraqi 
Government, the number of forces we have in the country is a secondary 
matter. What I think the Iraqi political leaders--the Shia government 
and the Maliki government, with Hakim and the Badr organization and 
Moqtada al Sadr and Maahdi army, all part of this government--what they 
would be quite willing to do is to have us conduct operations in Sunni 
neighborhoods in Anbar Province, but what will be left undone is 
confronting, in a serious way, the Shia militias which are also part of 
the problem.
  If you go to Iraq, as many of my colleagues have, as I have, and you 
talk to the Prime Minister or the Minister of the Interior, they 
recognize there is an insurgency. It is a Sunni insurgency. They would 
be very happy for us to conduct operations against the Sunnis. But they 
are very unwilling to take the steps that are necessary to provide a 
check on Shia militias and Shia operations in that country.
  There is another long-term consequence of the President's speech 
which may be, in the longer term, the most important. Any strategy of 
the United States--increasing troops, redeploying troops, training 
Iraqi forces--requires as an essential element, public support of the 
people of the United States. The people spoke last November and in a 
very convincing way said they need to see a change in course in Iraq. 
They continue to speak--not just in the formal polls, but go out to the 
coffee shops, walk the streets of this country, all across this 
country, and you will discover the great concern and disquiet the 
American public has about the President's policy in Iraq.
  Nothing changed last evening, fundamentally. In fact, the President 
actually predicted that this increase in troops is likely to create 
more chaos in Baghdad, more casualties. That is the nature of 
committing more troops to intense combat operations in an urban area. 
The American public will have a very difficult time squaring that with 
the assertion this is the way forward. I fear they might abandon 
support for any type of significant commitment to the region.
  This is a very dangerous precedent that could be emerging today. The 
President, in disregarding popular opinion, is running the risk of 
alienating that opinion in a way in which we cannot conduct serious 
operations there for limited missions in Iraq and elsewhere.
  We have a very difficult situation. We have a situation in which we 
have to begin to manage the consequences of the administration's 
failures. This is not a question of winning or losing. This is a 
situation of managing a situation that is deteriorating rapidly and, 
some fear, irreversibly. In doing that, we have to adopt a strategy 
that is consistent with our resources--our military personnel, our 
diplomatic resources, our economic resources, and the political support 
of the American people.
  That strategy rests in the context of a phased withdrawal of our 
forces from Iraq, a refocusing of our mission to specific areas which 
is more consistent with our national interests than trying to arbitrate 
and settle the sectarian civil war. These missions would be training 
Iraqi security forces so the country does not collapse because of chaos 
and anarchy; focusing attention on those small elements of 
international terrorists who are there, many of whom came after the 
fall of Saddam--not before; of indicating to the regional powers that 
we would not tolerate gross violations of the borders of Iraq or gross 
intervention in the political affairs of Iraq. These are missions that 
can and should be done, and they don't require an increase of troops. 
In fact, I would suggest they require a redeployment of our troops.

  The real challenge is--and the President alluded to it without 
indicating to the American public confidently and surely that these 
milestones are being accomplished--that the Iraqi Government, the 
Maliki government, must undertake serious reconciliation. I think the 
temper of that Government at the moment is not to do that because they 
feel they do not have to.
  Second, they have to begin to spend their own money. I was aware of 
the significant money--upwards of $13 billion that the Iraqi Government 
is sitting on--they are not spending. I hope the American people were 
paying attention when the President announced the Iraqis are promising 
to spend $10 billion for their own benefit. We have been pouring 
billions of dollars into Iraq for reconstruction and economic 
revitalization and the Iraqis have been sitting on billions of dollars 
when their survival and the integrity of the country is at stake. 
Something is wrong. They have suggested they will spend the money, but 
only time will tell because so far they have been extremely reluctant 
to spend resources unless they benefited their own sectarian community. 
If that continues, this will be another idle promise.
  There is one issue, too, that the President did not talk about which 
is essential to progress in Iraq. It is not democracy and freedom--all 
the buzzwords--because, frankly, what democracy means in Iraq to the 
Shia is Shia control. What democracy means to the Sunni is Sunni 
control. That is one of the reasons they are having sectarian struggle.
  What we need now more than democracy and freedom and elections is 
governmental capacity, ministries that actually can serve the people of 
Iraq so they feel they have a stake in their Government and the 
Government can respond to their basic needs. They have ministers in 
Iraq today who are political operatives. The Minister of Health is a 
devotee of Moqtada al Sadr and the

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Maahdi army and will refuse to adequately supply hospitals in Sunni 
areas. We have repeated examples where the ministries of Iraq are not 
only nonfunctional but deliberately so. Until they help them, or 
someone helps them, there won't be a government to rally around for the 
Iraqi people because the Government provides nothing to them.
  This is a long list of items that has to be accomplished. I am not 
confident, after the President's speech, that any of this will be done 
by the Iraqi Government, nor am I confident at all that an additional 
20,000 troops in Baghdad will make a decisive military difference. I 
believe the President has to go back to the drawing board to craft a 
truly changed strategy that will be consistent with our strategic 
objectives in the region, consistent with our resources, and consistent 
with the will and desires of the American people. I hope he does that.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, at this time I yield back any remaining 
morning business time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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