[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 29 (Thursday, February 15, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2006-S2008]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. KERRY. Four years ago, as we all know too well, we sent our young 
men and women to Iraq for a war that many of us now believe was a grave 
and tragic mistake. Day after day, month after month, the 
administration has repeatedly exacerbated that mistake by leaving our 
soldiers in the field without the equipment and without the protection 
they need and deserve, knowing full well what the lethal consequences 
would be.
  There will be and there is disagreement in this body over the next 
difficult steps to take in Iraq. We can disagree on troop numbers. We 
can disagree on a timetable. We can disagree on the shape of a future 
political settlement in Iraq. Surely, we can all recognize those are 
honest differences of opinion. But there is no difference of opinion 
and there is no disagreement here that we ought to be giving our troops 
absolutely everything they need in order to accomplish this mission. 
There is no disagreement that those troops deserve everything they need 
to be as safe as possible, and there should be no disagreement that 
when we ask young men and women to leave their families to fight deadly 
foreign enemies halfway across the globe, when we ask them to put their 
lives on the line, the least we owe them is the equipment they need to 
protect themselves and get the job done. One soldier dying from a 
roadside bomb because he or she does not have the body armor is one too 
many.
  The fact is, when it comes to body armor, when it comes to armored 
vehicles in Iraq, our troops do not have

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what they need. According to the Washington Post this week, our 
soldiers are short more than 4,000 of the latest humvee armor kit, the 
FRAG Kit 5. Fewer than half of the Army's 14,500 up-armored HMMWVs in 
Iraq and Afghanistan have the latest equipment. As Lieutenant General 
Stevens, the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Force Development, said:

       We don't have the kits and we don't have the trucks.

  It is not just armored vehicles that would keep our troops safer. 
They need better body armor, too. People are actually holding bake 
sales in our States in order to raise the money to privately purchase 
and send to their loved ones the armor or the helmets they want.
  Over a year ago, the Pentagon issued a report that many of the deaths 
in Iraq caused by upper-body injuries could be prevented if all the 
body armor issued to our troops included side armor plates. Some of my 
colleagues raised this issue with Secretary Rumsfeld, and he assured 
them that the Pentagon was going to begin the procurement and delivery 
of an additional 230,000 sets of side armor plates.
  Last month, another Pentagon report found continued shortages in 
force protection equipment for our soldiers, a shortage of body armor, 
a shortage of up-armored vehicles, a shortage of communications 
equipment, and a shortage of electronic countermeasure devices.

  We have also heard firsthand from troops that many are still being 
issued body armor without the side armor plates. How can someone be 
content to send our soldiers on the most dangerous patrols in the 
roughest neighborhoods of Baghdad without the best possible protection 
being afforded them?
  In the last 4 years, over 1,100 Americans have died from roadside 
bombs, and thousands of our best troops have suffered debilitating 
injuries or had their lives permanently altered by these terrible 
weapons.
  Knowing full well you don't have enough armor for the troops already 
in the field, how do you responsibly turn around and say: That is OK. 
We will just go ahead and put another 21,500 or more right there 
alongside them, particularly when it is a job that Iraqis themselves 
ought to be doing? By themselves, these shortages are trouble. But the 
President's plan to send over this additional force makes them even 
more questionable.
  Now we hear that the troops pouring into Iraq will not even have 
enough up-armored HMMWVs or other armored vehicles until July. So what 
is the rationale for putting in the over 20,000 now, when the armor 
their lives depend on is not going to arrive until July? How do you 
turn around and say to a parent or to one of those young people 
themselves that they are the next people to be over in Bethesda or in 
Walter Reed minus their limbs? Oh, sorry, we just didn't get them over 
there in time, even though we had a couple of years to make the plans 
and respond, the most powerful, richest Nation on the face of the 
planet, one that prides itself on its technology and on its support for 
the troops. How do you explain that to one of those soldiers?
  Eighteen months into the war, Donald Rumsfeld told troops in Kuwait a 
now famous line:

       As you know, you go to war with the Army that you have.

  Well, in addition to being a pretty smug and even cavalier thing to 
say at that point in time, you ought to measure it by where we are 
today. That was about a year and a half ago. You may go into war with 
the Army you have, but smart people adapt to their enemy's tactics. You 
exploit their weaknesses, and you certainly work to minimize your own. 
We ended World War II in less time than it has taken to prosecute the 
current war in Iraq. We ended it with a weapon that didn't even exist 
when World War II began, when Pearl Harbor took place.
  We have known for years now that the technologies our enemies are 
using to kill our troops are outpacing the equipment we use to protect 
them. And the gap between their offensive weapons and our defensive 
armor is only growing, thanks in part to a major increase in an 
especially lethal kind of roadside bomb, the so-called EFP or 
explosively formed penetrator. This is a diabolical contraption which 
has been described as a ``spear that rips right through the vehicle.'' 
It can shoot a metal projectile through the side of even an up-armored 
HMMWV and turn pieces of the vehicle itself into shrapnel that kills or 
maims the soldiers inside.
  Ninety percent of American fatalities from these terrible weapons 
have come in Baghdad. Against the warnings of former Secretary of State 
Colin Powell, against the warnings of GEN John Abizaid, against the 
warnings of the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff last year, who said we 
don't need more troops and don't want them, the President is now 
sending five brigades to referee a Sunni/Shia civil war. We are sending 
them without the protection they need to survive EFP attacks.
  Unfortunately, even with the latest armor, soldiers will still die 
from roadside bombs. But the new armor reinforces the doors, slows down 
the projectile, will keep soldiers safer, and it will save many lives. 
When GEN James Conway, Commandant of the Marine Corps, talked about the 
armor kits, he said the following:

       They are expensive, but they are going to save lives.

  The technology exists right now to keep our troops safer. So why, 4 
years later, do our troops not have it? Partly, it is due to the gross 
incompetence at the highest levels of this Administration in their 
commitment to the procurement process itself. Mostly, it is the fact 
that we have never been mobilized to actually do what you do in war. We 
talk about war; the rhetoric is all about war; but there is no request 
of Americans to behave as if we are at war. Certainly, for the people 
waiting for that equipment, there is no showing that we are serious 
about it.
  From the time we invaded, the need for a fleet of vehicles that could 
keep our troops safe has been unmistakable. From the time we first got 
there, people knew you would drive down the streets and be exposed to 
these kinds of risks. Yet we kept relying on one single provider of 
uparmored HMMWVs, and given the chronic shortfalls we have seen, that 
is a pretty amazing reliance. Still, the Administration doesn't seem to 
respond.
  The President's defense budget for next year does not include enough 
funds for armored vehicles, so the Marine Corps had to ask Congress for 
an additional $2.8 billion to buy more mine-resistant, ambush-protected 
vehicles. Going back to 2002, the Administration terminated funding for 
one alternative vehicle that was more suited to the battlefield in 
Iraq--because of what they called ``budget priorities.'' I want to know 
what the budget priority was that came ahead of providing a vehicle to 
our troops that would have been more suited to the battlefield. Was it 
the tax cuts? What was the priority?
  While this is an urgent short-term concern, we also need to think 
about what our soldiers will need in the long term for 21st century 
warfare. Enemies are taking book on the weaknesses that we are showing 
them on a daily basis. Unfortunately, this will not be the last war in 
which our troops are targeted in the vehicles they ride.
  Since Somalia, in 1993, we have known that humvees, with their thin 
skin and square-bottom chassis, are ill-suited for counterinsurgency 
and the modern battlefield. We need to bridge this short-term gap and 
we need to invest in the armored vehicles to keep our soldiers safe in 
the future. This is serious business, and we cannot afford to be 
vulnerable or reluctant to engage with the urgency it requires.
  No Commander in Chief and no Congress should knowingly put the lives 
of our soldiers at risk unnecessarily. But that is exactly what is 
happening as we escalate this war. It is long past time that we had an 
honest conversation about what protecting our troops means. Some of our 
colleagues have come to the floor, even after blocking a vote on what 
we might or might not do with respect to Iraq and the President's 
escalation plan, and they say they want an amendment saying that if 
Congress were to use the power of the purse to force this 
Administration to change its failed policy, that that somehow would be 
putting our troops at risk.
  Let me tell you what puts our troops at risk. It is sending them on a 
mission without the equipment, without the

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armor, without the vehicles that we know how to produce and are not 
being produced, and which they don't have. That is what puts our troops 
at risk. It seems to me it is unfair, if not negligent, to put our 
troops at risk in the crossfire of a civil war without the equipment 
they need.
  So we ought to make certain we give our soldiers the extra body armor 
and the latest uparmored HMMWVs in order to do their job. That is why I 
will again introduce a resolution in the Senate that offers us the best 
chance to salvage some measure of success in Iraq. I am convinced the 
real way you protect the troops is to give them a mission that indeed 
invites success. And absent the kind of summit and diplomacy necessary 
to resolve the fundamental political differences between Shia and 
Sunni, between the fundamental stakeholders in Iraq, our soldiers, no 
matter how brave or courageous--and they are both--cannot do the job. 
The job has to be done at a table negotiating out those differences.
  It is long since time we had a policy that sought to get Iraqis to 
take responsibility for Iraq. The Iraqis have shown again and again 
that they only respond to a deadline. About 6 months ago, General Casey 
and Ambassador Khalilzaid said publicly that the Iraqis had about 5 
months to make a series of decisions in order to resolve their 
differences, or it may become almost impossible to make it happen. 
Those 5 months came and went. Nothing happened. Nothing was required of 
the Iraqis that was firm. Nothing happened to change the equation on 
the ground in Iraq. I believe it is only with a deadline that urges 
them to take those steps that we will ultimately be successful. That is 
what I believe we owe our soldiers.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Klobuchar). The Senator from Oregon is 
recognized.
  (The remarks of Mr. Wyden pertaining to the introduction of S. 647 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. WYDEN. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa is recognized.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in 
morning business for such time as I might consume and that it be 
roughly 20 to 30 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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