[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 47 (Monday, March 19, 2007)]
[House]
[Page H2642]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           A FAILED STRATEGY

  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, 4 years ago, Vice President Cheney, on the 
looming war in Iraq, of which he was a principal architect, he and his 
staff are responsible for the manipulation and manufacturing of 
intelligence that misled people into believing there was a threat of 
weapons of mass destruction or there was some ties to 9/11. Neither of 
those things was true. Vice President Cheney said we will, in fact, be 
greeted as liberators. I think it will go relatively quickly. Weeks, 
rather than months, said Vice President Cheney, and he still does not 
believe that he was wrong.
  He is still a principal architect of the surge, of an escalation of 
the war in Iraq, of continuing a war without end, a war that President 
Bush said last November it will be up to the next President to 
determine when U.S. troops might come home.
  A failed strategy, a strategy that fails our troops. Our troops have 
done all that we have asked and more under difficult conditions. They 
started with inadequate equipment, and Congress had to push the 
administration to give them the equipment they needed. They have been 
put on brutal rotations, stop/loss orders, and they have done more than 
was asked.
  But the leadership has failed. Donald Rumsfeld is gone. He should 
have gone a very long time ago. Vice President Cheney is still there 
pulling the strings. We will be greeted as liberators, he said.
  Then the President two months later said major combat operations have 
ended, 1st of May. Nearly 3,000 American troops have died since the 
President gave that speech. Over 12,000 have been seriously wounded, 
very seriously wounded; and yet their answer is more of the same, stay 
the course, to escalate the conflict. They will not engage in 
meaningful diplomacy, and they will not change direction in Iraq. Their 
strategy will not bring a successful end to this war.
  They are now again trying to tie it to 9/11 and al Qaeda. Yet they 
are contradicted, in fact, by the Director of National Intelligence, a 
Bush appointee. When he was asked, Mike McConnell, if al Qaeda would 
establish itself in Iraq and they would launch attacks from there, I 
would not go so far as to say al Qaeda would necessarily believe that. 
They want to reestablish their base and their objective would be in 
Afghanistan.
  Remember Afghanistan? Remember Osama bin Laden? Remember 9/11? 
Remember the Taliban? They are still out there. They are planning and 
plotting. Afghanistan is going in a bad direction because the President 
diverted our attention, our troops, our resources away from a battle 
that was supported by all the major nations in the world to eradicate 
those who had attacked us so grievously on 9/11 into a discretionary 
war in Iraq, and still, the President would put the emphasis on Iraq.
  His National Security Adviser says this is a charade what they would 
do in the House of Representatives, a charade. If it is a charade, why 
are they fighting so hard? For the first time, Congress is going to 
exert its constitutional responsibility as a third and coequal branch 
to say enough failed leadership is enough and we want a new direction.
  The Speaker came to the well earlier and laid that out in detail, 
what that new direction would be, and this bill that we will vote on 
later this week would move us in that new direction. That is not a 
charade. That is the first meaningful challenge to the failure of 
leadership by Vice President Cheney and George Bush that have put that 
region at risk, that has put American troops in the middle of a civil 
war, which is now admitted by the Pentagon.
  We did not go there to be referees in the middle of a 1,400-year-old 
sectarian conflict in a civil war. The Iraqis are going to have to 
resolve those issues themselves.
  I wrote to the President 2 years ago February and said you need to 
set meaningful timelines to force the Iraqis to come together and begin 
to resolve their differences. They still do not want to do that.
  Americans should not be the surrogates. We should not be in the 
middle. Our troops should not be in the middle.
  This bill is extraordinarily important. Yes, the President might veto 
it, but we are going to challenge him again and again and again until 
we get a new direction that better serves our country, our troops, that 
region and the world.

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