[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 71 (Wednesday, May 2, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5442-S5444]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IRAQ
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I rise today to address the war
supplemental which was vetoed last night at 10 minutes after 6 by the
President. It is my understanding that today leaders from both sides of
the Senate will go to the White House, this afternoon, to begin talking
about where we go next.
I rise today to talk a little bit about what has got us to where we
are, why we are where we are, and what, in my judgment, as one Member
of the Senate, we need to be focused on.
I am glad the President vetoed the war supplemental with timelines
for withdrawal. It is absolutely wrong to tie the money to support our
troops to arbitrary timetables that have nothing to do with success or
failure but only to do with the declaration of a cause being lost. We
should never declare, as Members of the Senate, our cause to have been
lost. And we should never hold hostage the money for our troops based
on arbitrary deadlines or thresholds.
It is, however, important for us to debate the war on the floor of
the Senate. I hope when the next supplemental comes, it will be a
supplemental that goes to support our men and women who have been
deployed in defense of freedom, to give them everything they deserve
and everything they need without strings and complication. To do so
will not keep us in the Senate from debating the war, but it will
clearly separate the money to support our troops from whatever the
course that debate may take.
We have a long history in this country of many great Americans taking
exactly the same position. One of those great Americans, Walter George,
a Member of the Senate, from Georgia, a Democrat, in 1955--when Dwight
Eisenhower was President of the United States of America and Adlai
Stevenson had been his first opponent, and would be his second opponent
in the 1956 Presidential election--the big issue of the day was the
issue of Quemoy and Matsu and Red China's attempt to expand its
influence on those islands and the policy of the United States of
America and our President, Dwight Eisenhower. In Time magazine, April's
issue, 1955, Walter George, Senator, Democrat from Georgia, a man in
whose legacy and in whose shadow I now serve, said the following:
If it would advance the cause of peace, I would be happy
for the President to declare his policy. But how would it
advance the cause of peace to inform the enemy of what we
intend to do?
I know one thing--
George said, and I continue to quote--
if we do fulfill our high mission and our high destiny, it
will be because we have resolved to do our dead level best to
advance peace, to advance security, to shore up a shaky
world. Only by doing that can we vindicate the sacrifice of
those who died on land and at sea, and fulfill the hopes of
men and women in every free land.
It has been 52 years since that statement was made, but it could
never ring more true than it rings today. Walter George was absolutely
right, and Walter George, a Democrat, came to the defense of Dwight
Eisenhower, a Republican who was President, when Dwight Eisenhower was
being forced to play our hand in a critical issue of the day. We should
never force our chief executive officer, nor should we force our
generals, nor our troops in the field, by declaring our hand before the
cards are dealt.
There are a few other quotes I wish to share with my colleagues as I
lead up to the point I want to make this morning, and these are
contemporary quotes and these are quotes about Iraq. These are quotes
about the supplemental. These are quotes about our brave men and women
in harm's way. The first is by General Lynch, the commanding officer of
the third ID. When asked about whether funding should be tied to an
arbitrary timetable for withdrawal, he said:
Ultimately, a precipitous withdrawal would increase the
probability that American troops would one day have to return
to Iraq and confront an enemy that is even more dangerous
than today.
He is absolutely correct. Every time this country waited or every
time it determined to withdraw from a conflict or looked the other way
from a challenge of evil, it only had to muster itself in greater
numbers and fight with greater losses at a greater day in the future.
General Lynch continued:
No matter how frustrating the fight can be and no matter
how much we wish the war was over, the security of our
country depends directly on the outcome in Iraq. The price of
giving up there would be paid in American lives for years to
come. It would be an unforgivable mistake for leaders in
Washington to allow policies and impatience to stand in the
way of protecting the people of the United States of America.
I could not say it better myself.
Lastly, for quotes from contemporaries, Gary Kurpius, commander of
the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said the following:
The time to debate the war is not in front of a microphone
making irresponsible statements, and it's certainly not in
the funding bill that keeps our troops alive. If our troops
need funds, it is the responsibility of Congress to provide
them the money. Debate the war elsewhere.
My last quote is from an e-mail I got from Captain Schratt, on the
ground with the U.S. Army in Baghdad right now, a couple of weeks ago
when this debate was going on. He e-mailed me and said: I see they are
debating whether or not they can not support the war and still support
me. He said: Please tell them I am the war.
That is the truth. Our troops are the war. They are deployed and they
are fighting and their funding should not be restrained or constrained
or in any way hinged on political gymnastics. Those gymnastics belong
in the speeches on this floor and the dialogue we have with our
administration.
Now, it is my understanding there are some who are talking about a
second supplemental to come, to be an incremental supplemental, maybe
60 days at a time. I would implore the Senate to consider not doing
that because that brings uncertainty to our troops in the field and
only partial funding on a daily or on a 60-day basis, which is wrong.
There are others who are talking about maybe benchmarks--not timetables
for withdrawal but benchmarks for the achievement of the Iraqi people.
That may or may not be wise, depending on what those are, and I will
reserve judgment, but I will tell my colleagues one thing. A lot of us
around here have selective memories and have forgotten the fact that we
have had some benchmarks.
In fact, when we went into Iraq, the President of the United States,
George W. Bush, declared three succinct benchmarks. He said: When we
deploy our troops, we will do the following: A, we will search and find
the weapons of mass destruction that the U.N. and the entire world
believed were there, and in fact we found the remnants and the
evidence, although never the smoking gun. Then, second, he said: We are
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going to give the Iraqi people a chance to hold free elections and
determine a new Constitution and self-determine their future. The
Iraqis have held three elections. They have a parliament. They have
established a self-determined democracy in their way of doing so, and
it is functioning. Then the President said: Our third goal will be to
train the Iraqi Army so that it can protect and defend that fledgling
Government and we will come home.
Those are three benchmarks. Two of the benchmarks have been achieved.
The third benchmark is what the surge is intended to accomplish.
Today in downtown Baghdad and in Anbar Province, American troops are
sleeping and eating and deployed in the neighborhoods--not in bases--
side by side with Iraqi troops. The securing of neighborhoods is taking
place, the holding of neighborhoods is taking place, and the rebuilding
of those neighborhoods is soon to follow. In the months ahead, if we
remain committed to the cause, if we fund our troops, we have the
opportunity to reduce the violence, to allow the reconciliation that is
so necessary.
So as people debate whether we ought to put benchmarks in
supplemental appropriations for our men and women in harm's way, I hope
they will recognize we have benchmarks, three that we established when
almost every Member of the Congress voted to go into Iraq, two of which
have been completely met and satisfied and a third is partially there
and will ultimately be achieved if we don't pull the plug and we
continue to fund our troops.
War is never fun and it is always controversial. There is not a one
of us in this room who does not wish war was ever necessary. But we
know as we look back upon history, as Walter George, the Senator from
Georgia, said: We have to honor the lives of those who were lost on
land and sea to preserve freedom and liberty and democracy for the
people of the United States of America. We are at such a day today with
our battle in Iraq and in the overall war on terror. Iraq is but a
battle in that war. We don't need to send signals that we will quit; we
don't need to declare that we have lost. We need to declare the resolve
to see the mission through. There are 140,000 brave men and women
deployed in Iraq right now committed to the cause. When they come home
and I talk to them, to the man and to the woman, they all say: We are
there for the right reason. We are making progress. Continue to support
me, and we will do the job.
So as the leaders go to the White House today to discuss with the
President where we go next, as we look to what we do in this
supplemental, let's resolve to fund our troops. Let's resolve to do it
without condition on our troops. Let's resolve to do it without
declaring defeat but instead in the interest of and with a commitment
to victory. Then, if we have debate--and we should and we must--let's
have it on the floor, unattached to funding, not restricting our troops
but deciding what our course will be and the absolute objective to be,
rather than a conditional debate that only sends a message to our enemy
that our resolve may be lost and we may be turning the other way. As
Walter F. George said in 1955, an American Democratic Senator from
Georgia, in support of a Republican President, we should honor the
lives that have been lost and stay true to our commitment, and it will
never be in our interests to declare to our enemies what our intentions
might be.
Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, 3 months ago, the President of the United
States asked Congress to pass an emergency war spending bill that would
provide our brave men and women in uniform with the funds and the
flexibility they need to succeed in what has been called the central
front on the war against al-Qaida in Iraq. Instead, this body helped
pass a bill that substitutes the opinions of politicians for the
judgment of our military commanders. The bill Congress passed was, in
my view, unacceptable, and late. Eighty-five days after the President
had requested the funds on an emergency basis, Speaker Pelosi finally
forwarded the bill to the President yesterday. It was no surprise that
the President vetoed the bill within hours because he had said he
would, and so the outcome was predictable.
The President, in his address to the Nation last night, made it very
clear that it remains his desire to work with Congress to resolve this
matter as quickly and expeditiously as possible. Today, he is holding a
bipartisan meeting with congressional leaders at the White House for
that purpose.
We have known for weeks that this legislation was flawed and that we
would find ourselves in this place--a bill that included a surrender
date, when we tell our enemies we would simply give up, and one larded
with porkbarrel spending in order to secure the votes of recalcitrant
Members who were unwilling to vote for this flawed bill on its merits.
The President outlined these shortcomings last night.
First, he said the bill would mandate an artificial deadline for
troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq. The withdrawal could start as
early as July 1 and would have to start no later than October 1
regardless of the situation on the ground. The language in the bill
defies sound military logic and, I would say, common sense itself. It
makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing.
Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure, and it
would be irresponsible. As the President made very clear last night,
setting this deadline for withdrawal would also demoralize the Iraqi
people and encourage the killers across the broader Middle East, such
as al-Qaida, and send a signal that America will not keep its
commitments.
Second, the bill would impose impossible conditions on our commanders
in combat. After forcing most of our troops to withdraw, the bill would
dictate the terms on which the remaining commanders and troops could
engage the enemy. American commanders in the middle of a combat zone
would have to take fighting directions from politicians thousands of
miles away in Washington, DC.
Third, as I mentioned, the bill is loaded with billions of dollars of
nonemergency porkbarrel spending that has nothing to do with fighting
the war on terror and which demeans the importance of this particular
legislation, designed as it is to support our troops who are literally
in harm's way.
Democratic leaders know that many of us in Congress disagree with
their approach and their desire to use this bill as an opportunity to
make a political statement about their opposition to the war. Yet we
know there are not enough votes to override a veto. It is time to put
politics behind us and support our troops with the funds they need.
Some have confused the need to debate, which I agree with, with cause
for delay, which I disagree with. There should be no cause for delay in
getting these emergency funds to our troops, and the debate will indeed
continue.
In February, we began sending the first of the reinforcements that
General Petraeus, the new commander in Iraq, requested. Not all of
these reinforcements have arrived; roughly half of them have. As
General Petraeus said just last week, it will be at least the end of
the summer before we can assess the impact of this new operation, the
Baghdad security plan, or surge. We ought to give General Petraeus's
plan a chance to work.
In the months since our military has been implementing this plan, we
have actually begun to see some important results. General Petraeus
noted that one of the most important indicators of progress is the
level of sectarian violence in Baghdad. He reported that, since
January, the number of sectarian murders has dropped substantially.
Spectacular suicide attacks that have caused great suffering in Iraq
continue because these attacks are largely the work of al-Qaida, the
Sunni extremists--the enemy that everyone agrees we should be fighting,
or at least some say we should be fighting. At the same time, they
would impose arbitrary deadlines, imposing a surrender date on our
troops.
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The objective of these al-Qaida attacks is to reignite the sectarian
violence in Baghdad and breaking support for the war here at home. That
was the goal of al-Zarqawi, whom we were fortunate to be able to take
out of the fight, and that is the fight now of the remaining al-Qaida
extremists in Iraq. General Petraeus explained it this way:
Iraq is, in fact, the central front of al-Qaida's global
campaign.
It just boggles my mind, Mr. President, for some of us to stand here
on the floor and say we ought to withdraw our troops from Iraq when, in
fact, al-Qaida--the enemy that hit innocent Americans and killed 3,000
of them on September 11, 2001--considers Iraq to be the central front
in their campaign against the West. Al-Qaida's role makes the conflict
in Iraq far more complex than a simple fight between Iraqis. Many also
belong to the same terrorist network, as I said, that attacked us on
September 11, 2001. Were we to leave prematurely, were we to leave a
power vacuum in Iraq, al-Qaida would no doubt, as they did in
Afghanistan earlier, use that power vacuum as an opportunity to
regroup, to plan, to train, to recruit, and then to export additional
terrorist attacks against the United States here on this continent.
We need to give our troops all of the equipment and training and
protection they need to prevail. Without a war funding bill, the
military has to take money from some other account--notably, the Air
Force or Navy--just in order to make sure the Army has the resources
they need, so the troops can have the equipment they need, so they can
rotate back on a timely basis and come home to the loving arms of their
families, to repair existing equipment. And worst of all, in one sense,
failing to send this money on a timely basis to the military hurts the
military families who are waiting behind, anxious, as we all
understand, for the welfare and safety of their loved ones. Our troops
and their families deserve better.
So I hope that after the last 86 days, which have been characterized
by political theater and gamesmanship, where some have been more
focused on the 2008 election and trying to find ways to gain political
advantage, I hope Republicans and Democrats, the legislative branch and
executive branch, can come together and do what we should have done
months ago--get the funds to the troops as soon as possible, without
the surrender deadline, without tying the hands of our military
commanders and making their opportunity for success impossible, and
without the porkbarrel spending that demeans the noble sacrifice of
these brave men and women.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and yield back our remaining time.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Webb). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, we yield back all morning business time.
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