[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 62 (Wednesday, April 18, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H3551-H3552]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  DRUM BEATS OF WAR ARE GROWING LOUDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, the drum beats of war are growing louder. 
There is a growing fear here and around the world that the President, 
either alone or by proxy, will order a military strike against Iran.
  The President has escalated the military presence in Iraq at the same 
time he has escalated the military rhetoric concerning Iran. The 
President's accusations against Iran are being planted like seeds in 
fertile ground. Is this how the President cultivates diplomacy, or is 
he sowing the seeds for another war?
  The House must pass legislation that would require a debate and a 
vote before the President orders U.S. Forces to launch a military 
strike against Iran. This is the people's House, and the American 
people have spoken. They don't trust the President, and they are 
worried about his saber rattling toward Iran.
  I think of it this way: If Iraq is a quagmire, and it is, then Iran 
will be quicksand, with America sinking deeper and deeper into a 
disastrous foreign policy grounded in brute force and producing brutal 
consequences: thousands of American soldiers dead, tens of thousands of 
American soldiers gravely wounded, billions of dollars borrowed and 
wasted, over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed and injured, a raging civil 
war.
  And after all that, the President and the Vice President say a 
military option is on the table for Iran. To prove it, U.S. warships 
were ordered into the Gulf 2 weeks ago. It was a show of military might 
around the date that the Russian military intelligence sources have 
widely forecast that the U.S. would strike Iran in stories posted 
online and in newspapers.
  The current political regime in Iran is a government I do not endorse 
or support, but the record must show that the President's policies in 
Iraq created the problem the President now warns he will fix by 
military action, if necessary.
  After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the President installed Paul 
Bremer as America's de facto premier of Iraq. Mr. Bremer answered only 
to the White House and not to the Iraqi people. Bremer dictated a 
series of policies that dismantled Iraq from the inside out. With the 
White House calling his every move, Bremer first dismantled the Iraqi 
civil society, plunging an entire nation into chaos. The Iraqi 
civilians who ran everything from sewage treatment plants to traffic 
control to keeping the lights on were summarily fired. The country's 
infrastructure remains crippled by Bremer's order 4 years later. Bremer 
also dismissed Iraq's military, and in so doing, he put tens of 
thousands of demoralized Iraqis on the streets with a gun and a grudge. 
The vast majority of these people were in the military for the pay and 
the job, not because they supported Saddam.
  With Iraqi civil and military sectors wiped out over 4 years ago, 
there were no Iraqis left to guard the borders between Iraq and Syria 
and Iraq and Iran. The borders have been wide open ever since because 
the appointed proxy government didn't bother to understand the history 
of the region or a basic national security need to protect a nation's 
borders.
  We know weapons and insurgents have been walking across Iraq's open 
borders. Almost a year ago, leaders told me in Amman, and these are 
Iraqi leaders, that the most constructive thing the U.S. could do would 
be to withdraw from the cities and redeploy to the borders and 
establish border guards.
  Instead of doing something constructive, the President ordered a 
military escalation in Iraq that is destructive. The Iraqi people want 
us out of Iraq. The American people want us out of Iraq. But the 
President drives us deeper and deeper into Iraq and then threatens 
military action against Iran.

[[Page H3552]]

  As a lame duck President and as slave to his own failed foreign 
policy, Congress must ensure that the President cannot unilaterally 
strike Iran in the remaining months of his failed presidency. Congress 
must pass legislation that preserves the checks and balances to 
guarantee that the President must listen to someone other than the Vice 
President.

                              {time}  2015

  America cannot afford to remain on a hair trigger until a new 
President takes the oath of office in January 2009, but that is exactly 
what will happen unless Congress steps up to ensure that the President 
stands down on a military strike against Iran. We must take away his 
blank check.

                          ____________________