[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 69 (Monday, April 30, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5262-S5264]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, speaking on the same matters addressed by 
both the majority and minority leader, I remind our colleagues that 
last week this body passed by a very narrow margin what amounts to a 
strategy for defeat in Iraq. This course of action was not a surprise. 
After all, the majority leader had announced to the world that the war 
was lost. This, of course, was news

[[Page S5263]]

to people in Iraq, our soldiers in the field included.
  For example, SGT George Turkovich was quoted in the Las Vegas Review-
Journal, saying:

       We're not losing this war. Unfortunately, politics has 
     taken a huge role in this war affecting our rules of 
     engagement. This is a guerilla war that we're fighting, and 
     they're going to tie our hands. So it does make it a lot 
     harder for us to fight the enemy, but we're not losing this 
     war.

  This is from a 24-year-old a half a world away.
  I suspect the announcement that we had lost the war was also a 
surprise to General Petraeus. Remember, we confirmed him unanimously in 
this body. We knew what his strategy was. He has testified about it 
when he came here for his confirmation hearings. In fact, he had 
written a book about it.

  Many in this body, I fear, have forgotten what he said. In a Pentagon 
briefing, last week, when he returned from the theater to brief us on 
the status of the conflict, he reminded us:

       [A]s I noted during my confirmation hearing, military 
     action is necessary but not [a] sufficient [condition]. We 
     can provide the Iraqis an opportunity, but they will have to 
     exploit it.

  Now, I mention this because the majority leader and others have 
quoted General Petraeus as saying this war can only be won politically, 
not militarily. What General Petraeus actually said was: ``Military 
action is necessary but not sufficient.'' He has pointed out over and 
over that the political compromises and decisions and agreements that 
need to be made cannot be made in the context of the violence and 
instability that exists in Iraq today.
  Let me quote him again. He said:

       The situation is, in short, exceedingly challenging, though 
     as I will briefly explain, there has been progress in several 
     areas in recent months despite the sensational attacks by al 
     Qaeda, which have, of course, been significant blows to our 
     effort and which cause psychological damage that is typically 
     even greater than their physical damage.

  He said:

       And I again note that we are really just getting started 
     with the new effort.

  He concluded by saying:

       Success will take continued commitment, perseverance and 
     sacrifice, all to make possible an opportunity for the all-
     important Iraqi political actions that are the key to long-
     term solutions to Iraq's many problems. Because we are 
     operating in new areas and challenging elements in those 
     areas, this effort may get harder before it gets easier.

  He predicted this. He said, likely we will have more casualties as we 
ramp up our efforts because the fighting will be more intense, and that 
is a necessary precondition to creating the peace and stability which 
we hope to achieve by this increase in our activity.
  So it is mystifying to me those on the other side of the aisle can 
say we should withdraw now because the war is lost and that the only 
solution is a political solution, but we are going to pass a bill 
denying the President and General Petraeus, the State Department, and 
others much of the economic reconstruction funding we need to achieve 
the political solution. As the majority leader noted, there is still 
much to be done in Iraq, other than on the military side of the 
equation, just getting things up and running there.
  But this is the bill sent to the President, after months of delay, 
including 2 weeks when the other body was in recess. There, of course, 
was no recess for our troops, nor for the Pentagon, which, according to 
Secretary Gates, in an April 11 letter to Congress, told of the 
disruptions already taking place.
  Let me describe what some of those disruptions from this lack of 
funding are: reducing Army quality-of-life initiatives, including 
routine upgrade of barracks and other facilities; reducing the repair 
and maintenance of equipment necessary for deployment training; 
curtailing the training of Army Guard and Reserve units within the 
United States, reducing their readiness levels.
  This may be just the beginning of what is to come if this 
supplemental funding is further delayed. The National Journal, this 
morning, reported: ``Democrats have set a Memorial Day deadline to send 
Bush a reconstructed supplemental.'' Memorial Day--a month away. Why 
the further delay, when everyone knows the detriment to the training 
and equipment availability for our troops that has resulted already 
from the delay in funding? This would be dangerously irresponsible, and 
the impacts will get only more significant over time.
  Here are some of the additional results that will occur: reducing the 
pace of equipment overhaul work at Army depots, which will likely 
exacerbate the equipment availability problems facing stateside units; 
curtailing training rotations for Brigade Combat Teams currently 
scheduled for overseas deployment. Such a step would likely require the 
further extension of currently deployed forces until their replacements 
were judged ready for deployment. The self-fulfilling prophecy that 
would result from the lack of funding is: Our colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle say we are going to have our troops have to be in 
theater a longer period of time. Answer: Yes, if you continue to deny 
the funding, that is exactly what will happen.
  It will also delay the acceleration of additional modularized Army 
brigades necessary to expand the Army unit rotational pool and reduce 
the stress on existing units. This must be what GEN Peter Schoomaker, 
who is the Army Chief of Staff, meant when he stated, the Army ``will 
be forced to take increasingly draconian measures which will impact 
Army readiness and impose hardships on our Soldiers and their 
families.''
  These political delays are keeping much needed lifesaving equipment 
out of the hands of our troops as well. I supported the amendment 
offered by the senior Senator from Delaware to add an additional $1.5 
billion for the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, the so-called 
MRAPs, which, on top of the $1.83 billion for the services the 
President requested, would get these vehicles into the field now. As 
the senior Senator from Delaware said:

       MRAP could reduce the casualties in vehicles due to IED 
     attack by as much as 80 percent.

  So why would we further delay the funding to get these vehicles into 
the hands of our troops? Delaying this all the way to Memorial Day 
simply means further delays in getting this equipment to the troops.
  Meanwhile, though we cannot get this funding to the troops, the 
majority is feverishly at work adding unrequested, nonemergency 
spending to the bill--all in an apparent effort to try to cobble 
together enough votes to actually pass the bill, since the underlying 
surrender date is so unpopular.
  The bill includes over $21 billion in unrequested items--$21 billion. 
Among them is title V, which provides $3.5 billion in emergency 
agricultural assistance--things such as $60 million for salmon 
fisheries. The bill also includes provisions such as--and by the way, 
neither the Senate nor the House put these provisions in the bill; they 
were added in the conference committee--such as an extension of the 
Pharmacy Plus program in Wisconsin. Now, I am on the Finance Committee, 
and we did not consider this in the Finance Committee. It is, 
obviously, not an emergency, but, apparently, there were some folks 
from Wisconsin who could be brought along in support of the vote if 
this was added to the bill.

  These provisions have no place in the bill. They should not return in 
the final bill after the President has exercised his veto tomorrow and 
the majority decides to get serious and pass legislation which the 
President can actually sign.
  My recommendation to the President, if they are included, is to veto 
the bill. The military troops should not be forced to carry the pork of 
Members on their backs. This bill should be vetoed both because of the 
surrender date and because of the pork. It is time to end wasteful 
Washington spending, especially when it is being carried on the backs 
of our troops in an emergency supplemental bill.
  I saw the items: the spinach farms, the peanut storage, the tropical 
fish, bailouts for sugar beets. Let these provisions go through the 
normal channels. If they have merit, their sponsors should be able to 
carry the day and get them supported. If not, then we should not be 
supporting them anyway. But let's not slow down the money for the 
troops just in the name of some special parochial earmark.
  One thing that has been lost, I would add, in the race to enact this 
strategy for defeat is the consequences for this premature--this 
setting a deadline for

[[Page S5264]]

surrender. Remember, this is the first time ever in the middle of a war 
we would set a date and say: At this time we will be out of there. The 
message it sends to the enemy is--well, it is unthinkable. But think 
about the message it sends to the Iraqis who have fought along our side 
and to our troops and their families. It would be a nightmare for the 
Iraqi people were we to leave. As President Bush said:

       [T]o step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi 
     government, tear the country apart, and result in mass 
     killings on an unimaginable scale.

  Do we want to be responsible for that in this body, the mass killings 
that would result--exactly what we criticized Saddam Hussein for when 
he was in power? It would not end with an American withdrawal in Iraq, 
either. As General Anthony Zinni said:

       This is no Vietnam or Somalia or those places where you can 
     walk away. If we just pull out, we will find ourselves back 
     in short order.

  Failing in Iraq would set back the entire region. The Brookings 
Institution--no big supporter of the President, I would add--argues, in 
their study, that:

       Iraq appears to have many of the conditions most conducive 
     to spillover because there is a high degree of foreign 
     ``interest'' in Iraq. Ethnic, tribal, and religious troops 
     within Iraq are equally prevalent in neighboring countries 
     and they share many of the same grievances. Iraq has a 
     history of violence with its neighbors, which has fostered 
     desires for vengeance and fomented constant clashes. Iraq 
     also possesses resources that its neighbors covet--oil being 
     the most obvious, but important religious shrines also figure 
     in the mix. There is a high degree of commerce and 
     communication between Iraq and its neighbors, and its borders 
     are porous. All of this suggests that spillover from an Iraqi 
     civil war would tend toward the more dangerous end of the 
     spillover spectrum.

  We know Iran and Syria are fostering instability in Iraq. Al-Qaida 
and Hezbollah are both active there as well. Chaos in Iraq could draw 
in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi officials have threatened ``massive 
intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering 
Iraqi Sunnis.'' Kurdish succession could well cause Turkish 
intervention in the region.
  Failing in Iraq would be a dramatic setback in the war on terror. 
Iraq must not be divorced from its context--the struggle between the 
forces of moderation and extremism in the Muslim world.
  Al-Qaida has been in Iraq since before the United States invaded and 
has dedicated itself to fomenting sectarian violence there. Much of the 
violence between Shia and Sunni is a result of prodding by al-Qaida, 
starting primarily with the blowing up of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.
  Osama bin Laden himself referred to Iraq--I am quoting him--as the 
``capital of the Caliphate,'' arguing that ``The most . . . serious 
issue today for the whole world is this Third World War . . . [that] is 
raging in [Iraq].'' Those are not my words. That is what Osama bin 
Laden said.
  One of the terrorism experts, Peter Bergen, said this:

       [U.S. withdrawal] would fit all too neatly into Osama bin 
     Laden's master narrative about American foreign policy. His 
     theme is that America is a paper tiger that cannot tolerate 
     body bags coming home; to back it up, he cites President 
     Ronald Reagan's 1984 withdrawal of United States troops from 
     Lebanon and President Bill Clinton's decision nearly a decade 
     later to pull troops from Somalia. A unilateral pullout from 
     Iraq would only confirm this analysis of American weakness 
     among his jihadist allies.

  Failure in Iraq will encourage further attacks against the United 
States and provide a base from which to plan and train for attacks.
  I must remind my friends, if you are going to push this legislation 
through, the strategy for defeat, you have a responsibility to tell the 
American people what the consequences will be and to tell them how you 
would respond. These are the burdens of being in the majority. These 
are the burdens of making the difficult decisions we make in this body.
  I urge my colleagues to work together to develop a supplemental 
appropriations bill that President Bush can quickly sign, that will get 
the funding to our troops and enable us to give the strategy a chance 
to succeed so that the horrible consequences I have described will not 
be the result of our actions.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee.

                          ____________________