Congressional Record, Volume 153 Issue 113 (Monday, July 16, 2007)

[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 113 (Monday, July 16, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9236-S9258]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of H.R. 1585, which the clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (H.R. 1585) to authorize appropriations for fiscal
year 2008 for military activities of the Department of
Defense, for military construction, and for defense
activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military
personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other
purposes.

[[Page S9237]]

Pending:

Nelson (NE) (for Levin) amendment No. 2011, in the nature
of a substitute.
Levin amendment No. 2087 (to amendment No. 2011), to
provide for a reduction and transition of United States
forces in Iraq.
Reed amendment No. 2088 (to amendment No. 2087), to change
the enactment date.
Cornyn amendment No. 2100 (to amendment No. 2011), to
express the sense of the Senate that it is in the national
security interest of the United States that Iraq not become a
failed state and a safe haven for terrorists.

Mr. LEVIN. Parliamentary inquiry: What is the pending amendment?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending amendment is the Levin amendment
No. 2087.
Mr. LEVIN. I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Oregon be
recognized as in morning business for 15 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LEVIN. I then ask unanimous consent that the Republican leader be
recognized, and then following his statement, which we expect to be
about 10 minutes, Senator Durbin be recognized, and then the Senator
from Colorado, Mr. Salazar, after Senator Durbin; I further ask
unanimous consent that if a Republican wishes to speak in between
Senators Durbin and Salazar, that Republican be recognized.
Mr. WARNER. Reserving the right to object.
Mr. LEVIN. I thought it was going to be a morning business UC, but we
have protected a Republican speaking in between Senators Durbin and
Salazar.
Mr. WARNER. What is the order?
Mr. LEVIN. The order would be that Senator Wyden would speak in
morning business, then Senator McConnell, and then Senator Durbin, then
if there is a Republican, and then to Senator Salazar.
Mr. WARNER. Would we have the benefit of an important discussion on
your amendment?
Mr. LEVIN. Well, it is the pending amendment. Those who want to speak
on the amendment would be free to do so. Hopefully, there will be many
people speaking on it because we should have an opportunity before
Wednesday.
Mr. WARNER. I wish to address it, but as a matter of courtesy--we
have been at this for 29 years--I am going to wait until you speak, and
then I will speak.
Mr. LEVIN. I have a number of things to say on the amendment, and the
things I wish to say in depth I will maybe save until tomorrow. I would
not want to speak without your being here.
Mr. WARNER. We have been here many years together. We manage, even
though we oppose each other. But I do oppose you on this one, my dear
friend.
Mr. LEVIN. I feel similarly about your amendment. I think both would
enjoy being here when the other speaks. We can arrange that. We have
been arranging this for 28 years. We will continue to arrange it.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. WARNER. No objection.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Oregon.

Health Care

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President and colleagues, there are two truly critical
issues for our country. You hear it every time you have a town meeting,
every time a Senator is home. One of those issues is changing course in
Iraq. The second issue is fixing health care in America.
The Senate is going to spend long hours on the floor of the Senate
this week, hopefully, changing course in Iraq, making a fundamental
shift of the policy, where the Senate would come together on a
bipartisan basis. I wish to spend a bit of time this afternoon talking
about the long hours that are ahead for members of the Senate Finance
Committee in a critical part of the effort to fix American health care.
Over the last several months, four members, a bipartisan group in the
Senate Finance Committee--Senators Baucus and Grassley and Rockefeller
and Hatch--have toiled hard to better meet the health care needs of
this country's youngsters.
It is a moral blot on our Nation that millions and millions of our
kids go to bed at night without decent health care. This legislation is
part of an effort to erase that moral blot--an unconscionable fact of
American life that so many kids are scarred by the inability to get
decent, good-quality, affordable health care.
In recent days, the Bush Administration has indicated they are
considering vetoing this legislation. As one who has worked very
extensively with the Bush Administration on health care issues, it is
my hope they will join the effort, the bipartisan effort in the Senate,
to try to work this legislation out and to do it in a bipartisan way.
In fact, I think it is absolutely critical that it be done if there is
to be another bipartisan effort in this Congress that would attack
health care needs in this country on a broader basis.
Senator Bennett and I, as the distinguished Presiding Officer, the
Senator from Colorado, is aware, have brought to the Senate the first
bipartisan health care overhaul bill in more than 13 years. It has
brought together business organizations and labor organizations. It has
put us in a position, for the first time in more than a decade, to look
on a bipartisan basis at overhauling American health care. But to do
it, we are first going to have to address the immediate needs of this
country's kids. In fact, as part of the budget process, I was able to
add legislation to indicate that those critical needs of this country's
children would be added first.
Now, I would be the first to acknowledge there is a connection
between the children's health care program and the broader health needs
of our citizens. The fact is, most kids in America get health care
through private coverage through their parents. Those who are on the
CHIP program--the Children's Health Insurance Program--many of them get
coverage through the private sector as well, through private policies.
But we are going to have to find common ground if we are to fix
American health care. Democrats and Republicans on the Finance
Committee have tried to do that on the CHIP legislation. As the
Presiding Officer, the distinguished Senator from Colorado, knows,
there are a great many Democrats who would like to spend more than this
compromise effort would allow. We would like to look at allocating $50
billion for the needs of America's youngsters. The bipartisan
compromise--as part of the cooperative effort of Senator Baucus and
Senator Grassley and Senator Rockefeller and Senator Hatch--is talking
about $35 billion. That is pretty hard for some on our side of the
aisle to swallow.
Also, with respect to the extent of coverage, a number of Members on
this side of the aisle had been concerned about other groups of
citizens who have not been able to get good-quality, affordable
coverage, and they have been able to get benefits under existing
services offered by the children's health program because the Bush
administration allowed for special waivers. So what the compromise is
seeking to do is to say: All right, if it has been allowed under a
waiver program, let's not point the finger at anybody. Let's say those
waivers, in effect, would be grandfathered. They would be protected.
But then we will move on, and we would move on in a bipartisan kind of
way.
I will tell my colleague, the Presiding Officer--because he and I
have spoken about health care often--we know what needs to be done in
American health care. We are spending enough money, certainly. This
year, we will spend $2.3 trillion. There are 300 million of us. If you
divide 300 million into $2.3 trillion, you could go out and hire a
doctor for every seven families in the United States. We are spending
enough money on health care; we are just not spending it in the right
places.
We also know--because Senator Bennett and I have talked to a great
many on both sides of the aisle--there is a real prospect for an
ideological truce here on the health care issue in the Senate.
A great many Republicans, to their credit, are acknowledging now, for
the first time, that to fix American health care you have to cover
everybody because if you do not cover everybody, those who are
uninsured shift their bills to the insured. A great many Democrats,
also to their credit, have been willing to acknowledge that just
turning all this over to Government--having a Government-run health
care

[[Page S9238]]

program--is not going to work politically either, that it is going to
be essential to have a private sector in American health care that
works. It would be a reformed one. Private insurance companies could
not cherry-pick any longer, they could not take just healthy people and
send sick people over to Government programs more fragile than they
are, but that there would be a real private sector.

So in addition to spending enough money and in addition to something
of an ideological truce now on health care between Democrats and
Republicans, for the first time--I particularly want to credit my
colleague from Utah, Senator Bennett, for working closely with me on
this part of the effort--I think we can show people who have coverage
why it is in their interest to be for reform. Certainly, here in the
Senate we know that past efforts--particularly in 1993, during the
debate about the Clinton plan, the single biggest barrier was
convincing people who had coverage why it would be in their interest to
support reform.
What we have been able to do, on a bipartisan basis--Senator Bennett
and I working together is to come up with an approach that will show
people who have coverage--workers and employers--why it will work for
them with the very first paychecks that are issued under our
legislation, the Healthy Americans Act. Not in 5 years, not in 8 years,
not sometime down the road, but it will work for those who have
coverage--workers and employers--with the very first paychecks that are
issued when this legislation becomes law. The reason it would benefit
those workers and employers is they would have more cash in their
pocket. The workers would have more choices for the health care that
was available to them. They would certainly have more security--health
care that could never ever be taken away.
My hope is that we can have a cooperative, bipartisan effort on the
CHIP legislation, starting tomorrow night. As my friend from Colorado,
the Presiding Officer, knows, we will have a late markup. Democrats and
Republicans on the committee want to work together. We want to work
with the Administration. I hope the Administration will join us in that
effort.
I would also suggest that if that happens, we can go on to the
broader health care issue, where there are a number of areas where the
Administration seeks reform. I want to assure them I am interested in
working with them. For example, the President has made the point--it is
one that I share--that the Federal Tax Code as it relates to health
care disproportionally favors the most wealthy and rewards
inefficiency. Today, in America, if you are a high-flying CEO and you
want to go out and get a designer smile plastered on your face, you can
do it and write off the cost of that operation on your taxes--every
dime. But if you are a hard-working woman in a furniture store in
Colorado or Illinois or Oregon and your company has no plan, you get
nothing out of the Tax Code. You get nothing.
So what Senator Bennett and I seek to do is redirect those several
hundred billion dollars in tax expenditures for health care to people
in the middle-income brackets, the lower middle-income brackets. The
Bush Administration has a different approach with respect to the Tax
Code and health, but as I have said to the President personally, I
think he is still onto the basic concept. This is an area where
Democrats and Republicans can find common ground.
But if we are going to get, in this session, to the broader issue of
health care reform--of course, a lot of people think it cannot be done;
they think it will be 2009 and we will have another Presidential
election before there is real reform--if we are going to deal with it
in this session--and Senator Bennett and I are pulling out all the
stops to try to get broader health care reform out there this session
in order to get to that broader debate--Democrats and Republicans have
to come together on this crucial issue of meeting the health care needs
of this country, of wiping out this moral blot on our Nation that
millions of kids do not have decent health care.
That effort will start tomorrow night. This is a key time for those
of us who want to reform American health care. If we can come together
in this Senate--starting tomorrow night under Senators Baucus and
Grassley and Hatch and Rockefeller--my hope is we can keep that
coalition together and then segue over to the broader reform where
Senator Bennett and I have brought, for the first time in more than 13
years, colleagues, a bipartisan proposal to overall American health
care. It has the support of business and labor. Consumer groups have
been involved in the development of it.
I am very hopeful that under the leadership of Senator Reid--and I
see the distinguished leader from Illinois in the Chamber--we can
change course with respect to the war in Iraq but we can also change
course with respect to the most pressing domestic issue of our time;
that is, fixing American health care. The effort starts tomorrow night.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, would I be correct in saying this time is
reserved for the distinguished Republican leader?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I do not see him present at the moment;
therefore, if some other speaker, for a period of time, wishes to go
forward--
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I believe the Republican leader will be here
in approximately 5 minutes. I will, if the Senator from Virginia
concurs, suggest the absence of a quorum and wait.
Mr. WARNER. Fine. I just wanted to accommodate any Senator who needed
5 minutes. I see none.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I know the majority leader has
indicated he is going to file cloture on the Levin amendment and is
setting up a cloture vote for Wednesday. It had been my hope we could
have by consent set up a process by which we could put the Levin
amendment in the queue with a 60-vote threshold such as we have had on
virtually every Iraq amendment this week, and also a 60-vote threshold
on the Cornyn amendment, which is a logical counter to the Levin
amendment. As I indicated, it is my understanding the majority leader
announced earlier it would be his intention to file cloture on the
Levin-Reed amendment this evening. That would, as I suggested, allow
for a cloture vote to occur on Wednesday of this week. As I indicated,
it had been my hope we could have had the Levin amendment and the
Cornyn amendment in juxtaposition by consent, both requiring 60 votes.
This has been the way we have dealt with essentially every
controversial Iraq amendment this year, no matter what bill it has been
offered on.

Amendment No. 2241 to Amendment No. 2211

Given the majority leader's intention to file cloture this evening on
the Levin amendment, I now send an amendment to the desk and ask for
its consideration.
Mr. REED. I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Presiding Officer will hold on for a
second to ask a question of the Parliamentarian.
The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. McConnell] proposes an
amendment 2241 to amendment No. 2211.

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the termination of the
reading of the amendment?
Mr. DURBIN. I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

At the end of the bill add the following:

SEC. 1535. SENSE OF THE SENATE ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF A
FAILED STATE IN IRAQ.

(a) Findings.--The Senate makes the following findings:

[[Page S9239]]

(1) A failed state in Iraq would become a safe haven for
Islamic radicals, including al Qaeda and Hezbollah, who are
determined to attack the United States and United States
allies.
(2) The Iraq Study Group report found that ``[a] chaotic
Iraq could provide a still stronger base of operations for
terrorists who seek to act regionally or even globally''.
(3) The Iraq Study Group noted that ``Al Qaeda will portray
any failure by the United States in Iraq as a significant
victory that will be featured prominently as they recruit for
their cause in the region and around the world''.
(4) A National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the
consequences of a premature withdrawal from Iraq would be
that--
(A) Al Qaeda would attempt to use Anbar province to plan
further attacks outside of Iraq;
(B) neighboring countries would consider actively
intervening in Iraq; and
(C) sectarian violence would significantly increase in
Iraq, accompanied by massive civilian casualties and
displacement.
(5) The Iraq Study Group found that ``a premature American
departure from Iraq would almost certainly produce greater
sectarian violence and further deterioration of conditions. .
. . The near-term results would be a significant power
vacuum, greater human suffering, regional destabilization,
and a threat to the global economy. Al Qaeda would depict our
withdrawal as a historic victory.''
(6) A failed state in Iraq could lead to broader regional
conflict, possibly involving Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and
Turkey.
(7) The Iraq Study group noted that ``Turkey could send
troops into northern Iraq to prevent Kurdistan from declaring
independence''.
(8) The Iraq Study Group noted that ``Iran could send
troops to restore stability in southern Iraq and perhaps gain
control of oil fields. The regional influence of Iran could
rise at a time when that country is on a path to producing
nuclear weapons.''
(9) A failed state in Iraq would lead to massive
humanitarian suffering, including widespread ethnic cleansing
and countless refugees and internally displaced persons, many
of whom will be tortured and killed for having assisted
Coalition forces.
(10) A recent editorial in the New York Times stated,
``Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around
it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans
leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with
American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide.
Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and
Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power
grabs.''
(11) The Iraq Study Group found that ``[i]f we leave and
Iraq descends into chaos, the long-range consequences could
eventually require the United States to return''.
(b) Sense of the Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate
that--
(1) the Senate should commit itself to a strategy that will
not leave a failed state in Iraq; and
(2) the Senate should not pass legislation that will
undermine our military's ability to prevent a failed state in
Iraq.

cloture motion

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

Cloture Motion

We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the Levin-Reed,
et al., amendment No. 2087, to H.R. 1585, Department of
Defense Authorization, 2008.
Carl Levin, Ted Kennedy, Byron L. Dorgan, Russell D.
Feingold, B.A. Mikulski, Debbie Stabenow, Benjamin L.
Cardin, Amy Klobuchar, Pat Leahy, Richard J. Durbin,
Jeff Bingaman, Jack Reed, Ron Wyden, Barbara Boxer,
Patty Murray, Robert Menendez, Daniel K. Akaka, Charles
Schumer.

Cloture Motion

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

Cloture Motion

We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on pending
amendment No. 2241 to Calendar No. 189, H.R. 1585, National
Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008.
Mitch McConnell, Wayne Allard, Pete V. Domenici, Jim
Bunning, Jeff Sessions, Chuck Grassley, C.S. Bond, Mike
Crapo, Jon Kyl, Elizabeth Dole, Trent Lott, John
Barrasso, James Inhofe, Lindsey Graham, Lisa Murkowski,
John McCain.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority leader is recognized.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, it is a shame we find ourselves in the
position we are in. The sensible and logical way to set up this debate
with the Levin amendment and the Cornyn amendment would have been to do
it by consent with two 60-vote thresholds. This continued effort to
thwart the ability of the minority to get amendments in the queue and
to get them offered and voted on is not, I might say, a very effective
way to legislate, because it produces a level of animosity and unity on
the minority side that makes it more difficult for the majority to pass
important legislation.
In addition to the Cornyn amendment, we have the Warner-Lugar
proposal, which certainly deserves a vote, as does the Salazar--the
occupant of the Chair--the Salazar-Alexander amendment.
I hope we could do this in an orderly way. We have been on this bill
now for a week and a half. We are clearly going to be on it through the
end of this week. It would be important, as we move toward disposition
of this measure, to have all Senators who have important amendments
have an opportunity to be heard.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.
Mr. REED. I had the opportunity this morning to listen to the
majority leader, Harry Reid, as I presided. He made it clear that he
would be perfectly willing to allow a 50-vote majority vote on both the
Levin-Reed amendment and the Cornyn amendment or the proposed McConnell
amendment. I think if there is any attempt to obstruct the will of the
Senate, it is by those who are suggesting that we must have a 60-vote
threshold. I think Senator Reid made it clear that he would be happy to
entertain a limited debate and a majority vote on the Levin-Reed
amendment, the Kyl amendment, or other amendments that may be
appropriate on the policy in Iraq.
I also understand at this moment, under the pending unanimous
consent, the Senator from Illinois is to be recognized.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois is recognized.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for
his hard work with the Senator from Michigan in preparing this bill on
Defense authorization.
With all due respect to the minority leader, the statement he made on
the floor earlier is not accurate. The Republican minority leader said,
on issues relating to Iraq, we have required 60 votes. I remind the
Republican minority leader that the vote on the timetable on the
supplemental appropriations bill was a simple majority vote. It was not
a 60-vote threshold. The most important Iraq vote of the year did not
require 60 votes on the floor of the Senate. It passed the Senate with
a bipartisan rollcall, with 51 or 52 Members supporting it, and it was
sent to President Bush for one of his only three vetoes since he was
elected President. I am sure the minority leader from Kentucky
remembers that it was not a 60-vote requirement.
Now, let's look at the Defense authorization bill here--at the
history of the Defense authorization bill. Once again, I ask the
minority leader from Kentucky to please look at the record. What he
said earlier on the floor is not accurate.
In the last debate on the Defense authorization bill, there were two
Iraq amendments offered. One was by Senators Levin and Reed and another
by Senator Kerry. Both related to the war in Iraq, and both required
only a majority vote.
The Senator from Kentucky has not accurately portrayed what occurred
on the floor of the Senate either with our supplemental appropriations
bill or the previous Defense authorization bill. Now, for those who are
following this debate and wondering: Why are you worried about how many
votes are required, this is what the Senate is all about. The question
is, Will this Senate speak on the issue of the policy on the war in
Iraq?
The Senator from Kentucky understands--because he has been a veteran
of this body--that he does not have a majority of the Senators
supporting his position or the position of President Bush. So he
started this debate by saying we won't allow a majority vote.

[[Page S9240]]

It will take 60 votes--60 percent of the Senate--to change the policy
on the war in Iraq. The Senator from Kentucky is betting that he can
hold enough Republican Senators back from voting for a change in policy
on the war in Iraq to defeat our efforts to start bringing our soldiers
home. That is his procedural approach. He has stood by it. But he
should confess it for what it is. It is a departure from where we have
been on the debate on Iraq, on the supplemental appropriations bill,
and on the Defense authorization bill.
Mr. President, it is unfortunate, and it is wrong. It is wrong to
require 60 percent of this body to vote this way if, traditionally, on
the war in Iraq we have required only a simple majority. I suppose it
is encouraging to us that more than 60 percent of the American people
get it. They understand how failed this policy has been of the Bush
administration--the policy being supported by the minority leader of
the Senate. They understand that. They want us to do something about
it. But the Senator from Kentucky has thrown this obstacle in our path.
He created this procedural roadblock. He has filibustered--starting a
filibuster to stop the debate on the war in Iraq.
I have been here for a few years, and I have not seen a full-
throated, fully implemented filibuster that you might have recalled
from ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,'' when Jimmy Stewart stood at his
desk, until he crumpled in exhaustion, filibustering a bill to stop it.
Over the years, our gentility has led us to a different kind of
filibuster. It is a filibuster in name only, where one side says we are
going to keep this debate going on indefinitely, and the other side
says we are going to bring it to a close with a motion for cloture, and
we will see you in 30 hours; have a nice time we will see you tomorrow
morning.
We are going to change that procedure this week. Since the Republican
side has decided they want to filibuster our effort to debate the war
policy on Iraq, we have decided on the Democratic side that we are
going to have a real filibuster. One of the critics of this recently
called it a stunt that we would stay in session--a stunt that we would
have a sleepless night for Senators, a stunt that we would
inconvenience Senators and staff, the press, and those who follow the
proceedings. I don't think it is a stunt. I think it reflects the
reality of this war.

How many sleepless nights have our soldiers and their families spent
waiting to find out whether they will come home alive? How many
sleepless nights have they spent praying that after the second and
third redeployment their soldier will still have the courage and
strength to beat back the enemy and come home to their family? It is
about time for the Senate to spend at least one sleepless night. Maybe
it is only a symbol, but it is an important symbol for the soldiers and
their families. It really goes to the nature of sacrifice.
I guess I was raised as a little boy reading about World War II and
remembering the Korean war when my two brothers served. There was a
sense of national commitment in those wars. People back home, as well
as those on the front, believed they were in it together. Sacrifices
had to be made, your daily living habits, the kinds of things you could
buy, and ration cards and buying U.S. savings bonds. America was one
united Nation in those wars. We accepted that shared sacrifice, and we
were better for it. But during this war, sad to say, this President has
not summoned that same spirit of sacrifice. He basically told us that
this war can be waged without inconveniencing the lives of most
Americans.
Our soldiers go through more than inconvenience. They go through
hardship and deprivation. Many face injury and death in serving our
country. But for most of us, life goes on as normal. This President
hasn't asked great sacrifice from the American people.
When I visited Iraq, it was not uncommon to have a marine or soldier
say to me over lunch: Does anybody know what is going on over here?
Does anybody know what we are up against? It is a legitimate question.
We focus on these superficial stories in the press that don't mean a
thing and forget the obvious.
The obvious is this: Every month we are losing American lives; about
100 American soldiers die each month in this war in Iraq, and 1,000 are
seriously injured. We spend $12 billion each month. That is the
reality.
I know there is frustration by the soldiers and their families that
we are not paying close enough attention. But the American people
understand that this failed policy from the Bush administration has to
come to an end. Wasn't it interesting over the weekend when the Prime
Minister of Iraq invited us to leave, and said: You can take off
anytime you would like, America. We will take care of our own problems.
Prime Minister al-Maliki, the man we helped to bring to office, whom we
hoped would show the leadership in Iraq for its future, asked America
to pick up and go whenever we would like to.
What do the Iraqi people think about our presence? Well, 69 percent
of them say our presence in Iraq today, with our troops, makes it more
dangerous to live there. More than 2 million of those soldiers, of
those Iraqis, have left that country as refugees. Millions have been
displaced from their homes. Thousands--we don't even know the number--
have been injured and killed. They want us to leave--this occupation
Army of Americans.
What do the American people think about this occupation in Iraq? They
want it to end as well. They don't see any end in sight. They don't
hear from this President the kinds of strategy or direction that leads
them to believe that this will end well or end soon. They want our
troops to start coming home. I agree with them. I don't believe the
Iraqis will accept responsibility for their own country until we start
leaving. If the Iraqis know that every time there is a problem, they
can dial 9-1-1 and bring on 20,000 of our best and bravest soldiers to
quell the violence on their streets, what kind of incentive is that for
them to protect their own country and make the critical political
decisions which may lead one day to stability?
I look at this Cornyn amendment just filed. I respect my colleague
from Texas, but I tell you, he is asking for too much. He is asking the
United States to stay in Iraq to make certain that it succeeds. How
long is that going to be? How long will that go on?
There are three battles going on in Iraq today: First, who is in
charge? The Sunnis, Shia, Sadr militia, al-Qaida, or some other force?
The Kurds also have to be part of the equation. That battle goes on
every day on the floor of the Parliament in Iraq as they try to decide
who is going to try to govern their country.
There is a second battle going on as well. It is a battle as to
whether Iraq is going to be a nation. The Cornyn amendment assumes, and
many people assume, that Iraq has been a nation forever. It has not.
Certainly, in the depths of history, you can find Mesopotamia. We all
read about it in the earliest civilizations, and about the Tigris and
Euphrates. But Iraq, as we know it today, was the creation of British
diplomats after World War I who sat down with a map and said the French
can take Lebanon, bring in the Shia and Sunni--on and on, creating
countries out of whole cloth at the end of a war, dividing up the soils
of the Middle East. That was the creation of Iraq as we know it. It has
not been in existence that long--not one century.
Iraq has to decide whether there is more that binds them than divides
them. They have to decide whether the Kurds, Sunni, and Shia of this
location want to come together as a nation to share in governance, in
revenue, and to share in their future. That is an ongoing debate in
Iraq today.
There is a third debate in Iraq today that is even deeper in history.
It is a debate between warring Islamic factions that has been going on
for 14 centuries. Ever since the death of the great prophet Mohammed,
Islamic people have argued over his rightful heirs--one branch of the
Sunni religion of Muslims or one in the Shia--and they came to
different conclusions. They have not resolved that. Often, that
difference of opinion has erupted into violence, which we see today on
the streets of Iraq.
So Senator Cornyn files an amendment that says the United States
should stay there with its forces until they resolve these three
problems: Who is going to govern, whether there will be a nation, and
this Islamic division. Is that what we bargained for when the President
asked us to invade Iraq? It

[[Page S9241]]

certainly is not. Not one of those things was included in the
President's request for the authorization of force in Iraq.
Do you remember why President Bush told us we had to invade Iraq?
Saddam Hussein--a tyrant killing his own people--was a threat to the
region and to his own country. Saddam Hussein is gone, dug out of a
hole in the ground, put on trial by his own people, and executed.
The second reason the President said we had to invade Iraq was to
find and destroy weapons of mass destruction. Well, we have been
looking for 4\1/2\ years, Mr. President, for weapons of mass
destruction, and we cannot find one. So that reason for the invasion of
American forces is long gone. And the final, of course, was to protect
any threat of Iraq to America's security. I can tell you that after
Saddam Hussein was deposed and dispatched quickly by our fine military,
and when weapons of mass destruction were not found, Iraq was no threat
to the United States.
Now comes the new Republican rationale, the Cornyn-McConnell
rationale: We need to stay in Iraq until they resolve century-old
battles over the Islamic religion. We need to stay in Iraq until they
decide whether they want to come together as a nation. We need to stay
in Iraq until the Parliament decides to roll up its sleeves and make
important political decisions about their future. Just how long will
that be? How many American soldiers will be called into action for
those goals? How many times will Congress be called on to vote for
authorization of force to reach these objectives?
They have told us what it is all about. From the point of view of the
Bush administration and their supporters on the Republican side of the
aisle, there is no end in sight in our occupation of Iraq. They would
have us stay there for a long time. The American people know better.
They understand the sacrifices we have made.
The President likes to define this in terms of victory and defeat,
saying if we start bringing American troops home, somehow, in his mind,
that is a defeat. I say to the President, there are several things he
should consider. We were not defeated when we deposed Saddam Hussein.
We were successful. We were not defeated when we scoured that country
and found no weapons of mass destruction. We were successful. We were
not defeated when we gave the Iraqi people a chance for the first free
election in their history. We were successful. We were not defeated
when they were allowed to form their own Government to plan for their
own future. We were successful. We certainly have not been defeated day
to day with the courage of our men and women in uniform.
I hear an argument from time to time as well: If our troops start
coming home now and things go badly in Iraq, those who have served and
sacrificed and even those who have died will have done so in vain. I
couldn't disagree more. History has taught us a very basic lesson. The
test of courage of a soldier is not to be measured by the wisdom of
Presidents and generals to send them into battle. Presidents and
generals make serious mistakes. They send troops into battle where they
have no chance to win. But those soldiers do their duty. They show
heroism, courage, and valor, and no one--no one--can take that away
from them.
This political debate about the wisdom of the President's foreign
policy has reached a point where we have a number of amendments on the
floor. The Republican leadership has established hurdles and
blockades--everything they can find--to stop us from a vote that
reflects the feelings of the American people. Mr. President, you know
why? They are afraid of what the American people want. They are afraid
the American people may prevail. So they have dreamed up this
procedural requirement of 60 votes, a requirement that did not take
place on the Iraq amendments on previous Defense authorization bills, a
requirement that did not take place when it came to our supplemental.
We have offered them: Let's have a majority vote. Let's speak as a
Senate to this issue seriously, an up-or-down vote on our amendment, an
up-or-down vote on their amendment. They rejected it. Sixty votes--they
have it wired. They have it figured out. There is one thing they don't
have figured out and that is how they are going to go home and explain
this situation, how will these Senators go back to their States after
they have told their people they are giving up on the President's
policy in Iraq and explain why they didn't support the only amendment
that will seriously change our policy in Iraq?
I don't think they can. They can talk about supporting other
amendments. There is only one amendment by the Senator from Rhode
Island, Mr. Reed, and the Senator from Michigan, Mr. Levin, that puts a
timetable to bring this war to a close that doesn't ask the President
to consider our point of view but says we will use our congressional
powers to require of the President a change in policy. Only one vote.
Every other vote these Senators may cast, they are going to say: Oh, I
told you I disagreed with the President and that is why I voted this
way.
Let me tell you, they don't stand the test of scrutiny. Look
carefully at those amendments. See if they require of the President a
change in policy. See if they bring one American soldier safely home.
If they don't, then they don't achieve the goals the American people
expect of us.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, at some point, I would be privileged if I
could enter into a colloquy with my valued friend. So at the proper
juncture in his remarks, perhaps we could have a bit of a colloquy.
Mr. DURBIN. Out of great respect for the Senator from Virginia, I
would like to give him that answer now.
Mr. WARNER. I thank my friend. We can have our debates, and we
frequently do, on procedure, and it is very confusing, of course, to
the American public. But these are old rules that go back, I might say
with some sense of pride, to Thomas Jefferson. He had a hand in writing
them. Somehow this magnificent institution, the Senate, has been able
to serve our great Republic these 200-some-odd years.
Apart from procedure--and it seems to me I recall that at an earlier
juncture in the spring when we were debating certain amendments on
Iraq, the Senator from Virginia had an amendment. It got over 50 votes.
It was a bipartisan amendment. That amendment, quite interesting, while
it failed to reach the 60-vote margin, it was picked up by the
appropriators and word for word written into the appropriations bill.
It required, among other things, that the President report on July
15. That report, I think, was of value. People can differ with it. I
know it attracted a lot of attention and widespread press coverage. It
was of value.
That report also set up an independent group. I consulted with my
good friend, the chairman, Senator Levin, and told him I felt all the
years we have been working together we get a lot of facts from the
Pentagon about the status of Iraq's security forces. Shouldn't we have
an independent group not affiliated with the Department of Defense--I
am not, in any way, impugning the accuracy of their facts--have an
independent group give us a second opinion.
GEN Jim Jones, former Commandant of the Marine Corps, offered to head
up that group. I talked with him about it. He thought about it a long
time. He decided to do it. He has about 18 individuals with military
experience and two former police chiefs. They got back this weekend
from a very intensive 1-week schedule studying these situations. So
there is a great convergence of information that will be brought to
bear and made public the first week in September.
But back to this question before us. The distinguished Republican
leader put an amendment up. I would like to ask my distinguished
colleague if he would cover with me the provisions and what his views
are on some of the findings in the amendment.
This is a sense of the Senate on the consequences of a failed state
in Iraq. Much of this material was put before the Senate a few days
ago, filed by our distinguished colleague from Texas, Mr. Cornyn. Would
the Senator from Illinois engage me in asking a few questions about it
or is there another time he would be willing to do it?
Mr. DURBIN. No, if I may say to my colleague from Virginia, I will
consider this colloquy to be in the form of a question without yielding
the floor.

[[Page S9242]]

Mr. WARNER. Yes, of course, Mr. President.
Mr. DURBIN. Please proceed.
Mr. WARNER. For instance, the first finding:

A failed state in Iraq would become a safe haven for
Islamic radicals, including al Qaeda and Hezbollah, who are
determined to attack the United States and United States
allies.

We know from experience in Afghanistan that bin Laden occupied a
piece of territory there and set up his training camp. Much of the
training that led to the horrific damage to our Nation, loss of life
and property, occurred there--of course, September 11. Does the Senator
not agree--I am curious, I would like to get some understanding of what
the Senator's thoughts are on this sense of the Senate.
Mr. DURBIN. First, I wish to express my thinking and feelings about
the Senator from Virginia, whom I respect very much, who served our
country so well in so many capacities. He is the longest serving
Senator from the State of Virginia in the history of the United States
of America.
Mr. WARNER. One other, Mr. President, was a bit longer. I am No. 2,
kind of like the Senator from Illinois, No. 2.
Mr. DURBIN. Second longest in the history of the State of Virginia
and who has been a constructive partner in our efforts to deal with
this issue of Iraq. Even before other Senators on his side of the aisle
questioned, spoke out, he was there, and I respect him very much for
that effort.
Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Virginia that the Levin-Reed
amendment is conscious of the very first point he made, saying that
even redeploying troops, we would reserve the right to use our
soldiers, use our troops to stop the expansion of al-Qaida. So we are
not walking away from that threat.
Al-Qaida, as the Senator from Virginia knows, were the real culprits
on 9/11. They are the ones who are sworn enemies of the United States
and in what we believe. I don't believe any Senator on my side, in the
Levin-Reed amendment or otherwise, has suggested we would not continue
to work to stop the advance of al-Qaida and its evil scheme.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I think the Senator is accurate. I have
studied the Levin amendment. I am opposed to it because of the fixed
timetables. But let's proceed to the second one. I think we have
covered the first, and I find it very helpful.
The second finding:

The Iraq Study Group report found that ``[a] chaotic Iraq
could provide a still stronger base of operations for
terrorists who seek to act regionally or even globally.''

To me that seems to have some basis in fact. Does the Senator agree
with that?
Mr. DURBIN. I say to the Senator from Virginia in response, at some
point, the Iraqis have to take control of their country, their
territory, and their future. It is certainly not in their best
interest, if they want to develop, for example, an oil industry that is
going to fuel their economy and improve the lives of the people, to
allow terrorist groups to run without restraint.
So, yes, I think that is a concern they should have as a nation, and
that is why the second part of the Levin-Reed amendment is so
important. We reserve the right for American forces to help train and
equip the Iraqi soldiers, Army, and police.
Fighting terrorism, we now see most often is a military function, but
I think historically it has been a police function. Regardless of
which, we reserve in the Levin-Reed amendment the right for America to
continue to invest in the Iraqi Army and police force, for that very
reason, so there is internal stability in Iraq, even as our combat
forces are removed.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I appreciate that answer. I think there is
a provision--as a matter of fact, the amendment Senator Lugar and I
filed has very much the same language in it. Let's proceed to No. 3.

The Iraq Study Group noted that ``Al Qaeda will portray any
failure by the United States in Iraq as a significant victory
that will be featured prominently as they recruit for their
cause in the region and around the world.''

That concerns me. I think there is some truth to that statement.
Mr. DURBIN. The Senator from Virginia served on the Intelligence
Committee, as I did for 4 years. I think he served longer. He will
recall we were told by our intelligence agencies that our invasion of
Iraq has led to an emergence of al-Qaida terrorism in that country.
Sadly, these terrorists are taking their training by trying to kill
American soldiers and those who support us.
So my feeling is that the current strategy we have been using,
unfortunately, is fueling this growth in terrorism, growth in al-Qaida,
the presence of all these combat troops.
I sincerely believe we have to understand that fighting al-Qaida,
fighting terrorism is still a high priority. This administration was
diverted from our first priority.
The Senator from Virginia may remember that after 9/11, within days,
the President came to the Senate and asked us to declare war on al-
Qaida and those responsible for 9/11. The vote was unanimous. Every
Senator voted in favor of that request, both political parties. Those
were sworn enemies of the United States who had killed 3,000 innocent
people. But we lost sight of that goal. Instead of focusing on
Afghanistan, the Taliban, and al-Qaida, we were diverted into Iraq.
I say to the Senator from Virginia, as we start bringing combat
soldiers out of Iraq, I don't believe we should walk away from our
responsibility in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban, working on the
border with Pakistan to try to make sure the growth of al-Qaida is
stopped.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I say to the Senator most respectfully, I
know no one over here who wants to try to do a precipitous withdrawal
or lessen our efforts against al-Qaida. As a matter of fact, we want to
reinforce our efforts against al-Qaida. We can go back and argue the
numerical presence of al-Qaida at the time we went in. I do recall that
very vividly and conducted many hearings in the Armed Services
Committee. Al-Qaida was not high on the scope. There was mention of it.
We have to deal with the facts that exist now, and it is clear, for
whatever reason, they are now in that area in significant numbers
larger than when we went in. I, personally, feel it is not as a
consequence of our military action thus far. They simply see the
terrific divisions between the Sunni culture and the culture of the
Shia, and they are trying to foment among those two venerable religious
cultures as much fighting as they possibly can. I think we both have to
agree, to that extent, they have been successful.
Clearly, al-Qaida has as its main goal, at such time as possible, to
bring about further harm to the United States of America. There is no
doubt in my mind, and I am sure there is no doubt in the mind of the
Senator from Illinois. So I think anything that is portrayed as a
failure of our commitment in Iraq could be utilized, as I said, for
recruitment of their troops, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere
in the world.
Mr. DURBIN. May I say to the Senator from Virginia in response that I
believe--and I think the Levin-Reed amendment addresses this in section
3--we also should be thinking beyond the parameters of our current
discussion about military prisons and about other nations in the
region. I am sure the Senator from Virginia is going to bring that up,
too, as part of it.
It strikes me at this point in time that other nations in the region
interested in stability in their own countries and stability overall
have not accepted or shouldered the responsibility they should. Whether
it is the Arab League or some other group, they need to step forward
and say that the territorial integrity of Iraq, the stability of Iraq
is in the best interests of the region. I don't think they are going to
do that as long as the U.S. presence is so overwhelming, as long as we
are the issue. If the issue is Iraq and its future, I think it is more
likely these countries will step forward, and this Levin-Reed amendment
makes that point.
What we are talking about is a comprehensive strategy to deal with
the future of Iraq.
Mr. WARNER. But I say, in response to my distinguished colleague, it
is for that very reason the President is dispatching the Secretaries of
State and Defense into that region, to bring that point very clearly,
this problem which is being experienced in Iraq. And when

[[Page S9243]]

I say ``experienced,'' I mean devastating loss of life of Iraqi
citizens, considerable loss of life of our own forces, and loss of
limb. That is something which every Senator on both sides of the aisle
is concerned with daily. But thus far, the bordering nations certainly
have not stepped up, in my estimation, to take a constructive role. If
anything, we have, in Syria and Iran, pretty convincing evidence that
they are taking steps antithetical to bringing about a resolution of
some sort of peace and stability in Iraq.
Mr. DURBIN. I might say, in response to the Senator from Virginia,
that I don't recall the exact vote, but when Senator Lieberman offered
an amendment to this bill last week relating to Iran, the vote was
overwhelmingly bipartisan. We agree with that. How do you contain Iran?
How do you stop Iraq from becoming an Iranian client state?
There is so much we can do, but the region has to respond. The
Senator from Virginia knows as well as I do that there is division
within the Islamic religion and that the Sunni faction or element is
the most dominant in that region and around the world.
Mr. WARNER. By far. I think it has been 90 percent----
Mr. DURBIN. An overwhelming percentage.
Mr. WARNER.--are associated with the Sunni perspective versus about
10 or less percent the Shia.
Mr. DURBIN. So it does not seem to be in the best interest of other
Islamic states to see the development of a Shia force that combines
Iraq and Iran. So my feeling is, again either through the United
Nations, through NATO, through other groups, but trying to make this a
much more inclusive effort, that we have a much better chance.
The problem is clear: As long as it is the United States dominating
the agenda in Iraq, it is an obstacle for other countries to get
involved. I salute the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State
for their efforts, but I think we have complicated the situation
dramatically with the length of this war and the visibility of the
United States as the lead force in this invasion.
Mr. WARNER. We have to decide on the facts as they exist now, and I
think our Government has. But even in the recent words of the
President, he wants to intensify the participation of other nations in
this situation.
My colleague, Senator Lugar, in preparing our amendment--and he is
quite expert in this area--has a considerable portion of our
amendment--again, a sense of the Senate--directed at steps our country
could be taking to augment those steps already taken. He recently met
with the Secretary of State. They had a discussion here a few days ago,
prior to our entering the amendment on this very matter. So we are
moving forward.
I think my colleague and I have no difference on the need to involve
the border states and other Muslim countries of responsibility.
Mr. DURBIN. I say to the Senator from Virginia, he used some words
which I think tell part of the story here when he said his amendment
with Senator Lugar is a sense-of-the-Senate amendment. He is a veteran
lawmaker and knows a sense-of-the-Senate resolution does not have the
power of law. It is to suggest policy changes to the administration.
The difference with Levin-Reed, if I am not mistaken, is we are dealing
with legislative language. We are actually changing the law of the land
when it comes to our forces in Iraq. That is significantly different.
This is self-enforcing, the Levin-Reed amendment. Sense-of-the-Senate
resolutions, either by Senator Lugar or Senator Cornyn notwithstanding,
will not change the policy. They do not have the binding impact of law
as the Levin-Reed amendment does.
Mr. WARNER. We have to always monitor ourselves with the Constitution
of the United States, and it explicitly gives to the President the
power as Commander in Chief to direct our forces and to employ such
strategy as he deems necessary to defend the security interests of our
country. That is my concern with my distinguished colleague, Senator
Levin, and he and I have worked here in this Chamber now in our 29th
year, for those following this debate. My concern is that Congress
become involved in military strategy and writing into law precisely
what is done. I think that is crossing a constitutional issue.
I would like to continue with my colleague.
Mr. DURBIN. I might just say that I am glad my colleague from West
Virginia is not on the floor because I don't have my Constitution in my
pocket. But certainly article I, section 8--thank you, Senator, for
covering for me here--says--if the Senator from Virginia will bear with
me for just one moment.
Mr. WARNER. I know the provision quite well. It is on the regulation.
Mr. DURBIN. To raise and support armies, provide and maintain a navy,
provide for militia, to provide for organizing, arming, and
disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be
employed--there may be another section here I am overlooking.
Mr. WARNER. I think you have about got it, if I may say.
Mr. DURBIN. Within the powers of Congress, we are not silent when it
comes to the conduct of our military in this country.
Mr. WARNER. No, we are on a coequal basis, as the Senator well knows.

Mr. DURBIN. To make rules for the Government and regulation of the
land and naval forces. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution.
Mr. WARNER. Well, I remember on this floor and my distinguished
colleague from Michigan remembers when Senator Byrd argued very
persuasively about certain aspects of the famous War Powers Act. Now,
if we bring all of that history into this debate, and it may well be
that we should do that, the reason that subject was carefully
considered by the Senate, passed, and became law many years ago--each
President has acknowledged that in spirit they are complying with the
directions of the Congress, but they do not want it put into law.
Mr. DURBIN. May I ask the Senator from Virginia, and I know this is
not following the exact process of our Senate rules, but I would ask
him if he would address a point I made earlier; that the authorization
for the use of force which President George W. Bush brought before us
in October 2002 was explicit in the reasons for our invasion of Iraq--
the threat of Saddam Hussein, the threat of weapons of mass
destruction, and any threat of that nation to the security of the
United States. Does the Senator from Virginia believe that
authorization of the use of force applies to the current circumstance
in Iraq today?
Mr. WARNER. Well, I was going to speak on that later tonight when I
address my colleagues and point to the Congressional Record today,
which contains the amendment by Senator Lugar and myself. But,
essentially, we bring to the attention of the Senate and provide the
following language for the President, if I may read it, on page S 9224
of Friday's Congressional Record, in our section:

The findings that supported H.J. Res. 114, Public Law 107-
243, which was enacted in 2002 and which authorized the
President to use the Armed Forces of the United States
against Iraq, require review and revision.

So, Senator, I have gone on record, together with my colleague,
Senator Lugar, that this is necessary, and we further call on the
President--and I read the bill.
Mr. LEVIN. What section are you reading?
Mr. WARNER. Reading section 3 of my amendment, and it is on page S
9224 of Friday's Congressional Record.
Mr. LEVIN. What section of the bill?
Mr. WARNER. It is our amendment, it is on page 14 of our amendment.
Mr. LEVIN. Is there a number?
Mr. WARNER. The amendment is at the desk, on page 14.
Mr. LEVIN. If the Senator would yield so we can follow him, I
wondered if there is a number in front of the paragraph you are
reading.
Mr. WARNER. I will hand you my copy.
Mr. LEVIN. Section 14.
Mr. WARNER. I wanted to read the important second sentence--I
actually wrote this provision myself; Senator Lugar concurred in it--
the second sentence, after addressing the fact that we felt it required
review by the Congress of the United States. That is the one required
under the appropriations bill language, which we passed here--not
passed; 50-some-odd Senators voted for it when I put it up.

[[Page S9244]]

Therefore, as part of the September 15th, 2007, report,
Congress expects that the President will submit to Congress a
proposal to revise Public Law 107-243.

So Senator Lugar and I come foursquare and address that issue
straight-on. There is concern. I was one of the four Senators who wrote
the language, and if I may engage my colleagues, the law, 107-243,
provided support for U.S. diplomatic efforts. That is section 2.

The Congress of the United States supports the efforts by
the President to
(1) strictly enforce through the United Nations Security
Council all relevant Security Council resolutions regarding
Iraq, and encourages him in those efforts; and
(2) obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security
Council to ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay,
evasion, and noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies
with all relevant Security Council resolutions.
Section 3. Authorization for the use of United States Armed
Forces.

That is the provision Senator Lugar and I address in our amendment.
That authorization is very short, and I would like to engage in the
reading of it.

Authorization for use of United States Armed Forces. The
President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United
States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in
order to
(1) defend the national security of the United States
against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council
resolutions regarding Iraq.

So one is the benchmark, the underlying statement by the Congress
which gives rise to the actions today to support the President, but I
believe that in view of all that has transpired in the nearly 5 years--
this will be 5 years since we passed this in October--it is the duty of
the Congress to review it, and we have asked in our amendment for the
President to come forth with proposals.
Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator will yield, I would like to ask a very
pointed question. And I think I know the answer, but I want to get his
opinion. Does the Senator from Virginia believe that today this
administration is using military force in Iraq beyond the scope of our
authorization for the use of force in October of 2002?
Mr. WARNER. I think the President can still act within that language
right there--defend the national security of the United States against
the continuing threat posed by Iraq. The Government of Iraq that
existed at the time this was written is gone; that was Saddam Hussein.
There is a new government there. But they, unfortunately, have not
exercised the full control, the full reins of sovereignty that the
people of Iraq, voting freely, have given them. We set up the
structure, the infrastructure that enabled those votes to take place,
and we gave them a measure of security so that they could go to the
polls and vote. But, in my judgment, this language still underpins the
President's actions.
I would remind the Senator, in a way, each authorization act of the
armed services, since enactment of this law, in a sense de facto
confirms the President's authority that he is exercising under it. We
never challenged him in a single--I think I counted up 4 authorization
bills and probably 10 different appropriations bills that have been
passed authorizing the President to use these funds.
Again, it is sort of de facto recognition that the language still
stands. But my thought is that the American people, the world is
entitled to Congress addressing it and, hopefully, we can resolve it
and put down in greater detail the authority that the Congress wishes
to give the President as he moves forward, having hopefully given the
Congress the benefit of such revisions in policy as he deems necessary
in early October this year.
Mr. DURBIN. I might say to the Senator from Virginia, I am going to
yield because I wish to allow the Senator from Michigan, if he wishes,
to continue this colloquy. But I wish to say what the Senator from
Virginia has said is troubling to me as an individual Senator in this
regard. I was one of 23 Senators who voted against the authorization of
the use of force in Iraq. I believed it was wrong. My position did not
prevail.
Mr. WARNER. That is this bill we are discussing became law.
Mr. DURBIN. The majority position in the Senate at that time, even
the majority position on my side of the aisle, voted for the
authorization of force.
I had believed, and this goes back to earlier service in the House,
that once Congress has spoken before the Nation, we move forward
together. That is why I have supported the appropriations necessary for
the forces in the field, even though I disagree with the policy and
voted against the authorization of force. I have always believed they
deserve to have the training, the equipment, whatever is necessary, to
come home safely.
I would say to the Senator from Virginia, his observation a moment
ago is troubling. I don't wish to put words in his mouth, but when I
asked whether we were asking beyond the scope of the original
authorization, the Senator from Virginia said that with each subsequent
Defense authorization bill and appropriations bill, we were
reauthorizing. I use that word, but I don't want to presume the Senator
said that word. That is how I interpret it.
Mr. WARNER. I said those words. I stand by those words. I said ``de
facto'' because there was every available means in the course of the
debate on our authorizations bill for colleagues to come and challenge
this. No one did.
As a matter of fact, the first reference to this occurred when I was
chairman of the committee and I remember, it was last fall--I think it
was General Abizaid, I asked him about this very provision. It is in
the Record. I said I was concerned about whether there was an
obligation of Congress to go back and review this language and
determine whether it comports with the various missions he was
performing at the direction of the President.
I can't recall exactly what his responses were. But I did raise this.
That is the very reason I asked Senator Lugar to join me in raising it
again. I think it is incumbent upon the Congress to debate it. But we
certainly have passed by and legislated many times, with full knowledge
that this is the basis on which the funds we have appropriated are
being utilized for the forces.
Mr. DURBIN. I might say to the Senator from Virginia, I have been
asked to file a motion, which I am going to do at this time. I will
send this to the desk.
Mr. WARNER. Madam President, we will go off the colloquy for that
purpose?

Amendment No. 2252 to Amendment No. 2241

Mr. DURBIN. Yes. I send an amendment to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Stabenow). The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Illinois [Mr. Durbin] proposes an
amendment numbered 2252 to amendment No. 2241.

The amendment is as follows:

At the end of the amendment add the following:
This section shall take effect one day after the bill's
enactment.

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that no motions
to commit be in order prior to the cloture votes on Wednesday.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is
so ordered.
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I yield the floor and thank the Senator
from Virginia.
Mr. WARNER. I thank my colleague. We did get part way into one of the
pending amendments, and that is the amendment of Senator McConnell. I
wish we had gotten one paragraph further and that is the National
Intelligence Estimate, its conclusions. As a matter of fact, I
understand another updated intelligence estimate is soon going to be
received by the Congress and the American public. The National
Intelligence Estimate states:

Al-Qaida would attempt to use Anbar province to plan
further attacks outside of Iraq;
Neighboring countries would consider actively intervening
in Iraq; and
Sectarian violence would significantly increase in Iraq
accompanied by massive civilian casualties and displacement.

That is my concern with the Levin amendment. If we go in and announce
with concrete law as to what our tactics should be, and we have this
fixed timetable, with all due respect to my friend, I cannot support
that.
I thank my colleague.
Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator from Virginia and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, we are talking about some very serious

[[Page S9245]]

issues that impact the life and safety of our soldiers whom we have
called on to serve us in Iraq. It is a matter the American people care
about, and we owe them the most careful study.
To my distinguished colleague, the assistant Democratic majority
leader, Senator Durbin, I would say one thing about a change in
strategy. We voted to change our strategy. We voted 80 to 14, 53 days
ago, to change our strategy, to send General Petraeus and fund the
surge that is going on in Iraq. That is our strategy. We just voted on
this. In fact, a few weeks ago, the last part of that surge arrived in
Iraq. What, are we going to change it again, this month?
Later this week, we will vote on the Levin amendment to decide
whether to change, again, our strategy in Iraq. Changing strategy by
Congress during a time of war, particularly making changes that are
opposed by the military and our Commander in Chief, is not a small
matter. Our decisions deal with war and how to achieve peace and will
affect the safety and the mission of those magnificent men and women
who now serve us in Iraq.
For the busy American, the casual observer, and even the world
citizen, it may be this is an appropriate time to vote on this subject
again. Certainly, the frustration in our country and inside all of us
is high and we are deeply concerned.
I would note that I think all of us agree that quite a number of
errors have taken place in our military actions in Iraq. I suggest
perhaps the most serious error was our belief that we could, too
readily, alter this Government in Iraq and create a new government that
would be effective virtually overnight.
That is contrary to good, conservative principles. These people in
Iraq have never had a heritage of a functioning government other than
brutality, and it is very difficult to do. I think we are finding out
it is very difficult to do. It can't be done as quickly as many of us
would like to have thought when this activity was begun some years ago.
But with regard to this change in policy, I suggest the Members in
the Senate know better. We know it is not appropriate to be changing
our policy again. We know that any nation, especially one that aspires
to be a great nation, must deal with these life-and-death matters with
maturity and sound judgment. We know if we were to lift our eyes off
politics and emotion, that our country, striving to do good, is facing
a most difficult challenge in Iraq. Things have not gone well. Our
terrorist enemies are watching our politics with great interest.
Sometimes they play us like a Stradivarius. And so our allies are
watching. So, indeed, is the whole world. The terrorists are quite
sophisticated and strive to produce a continuous series of bloody
headlines to affect American public opinion. Our judgment, our
character, our principles, our very souls are being tested. But this
Nation has faced tough times before.
Don't we remember the history of Washington at Valley Forge or the
burning of our own Capitol by the British in 1812 or the brutal bloody
Civil War or the massive deaths in World War I or the attack on Pearl
Harbor or the Italian campaign, the ferocious battles for Iwo Jima,
Okinawa, D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge or the Chosin Reservoir in the
Korean war? These are major moments in American history, and blunders
in strategy and tactics and timing occurred in almost every one of
them. Many errors occurred. Failures that cost lives unnecessarily,
placed our Nation at greater risk than was necessary. But that is the
nature of war.
Enemies lose a great deal of sleep trying to figure out what the
weaknesses are of their adversary and trying to exploit that, and
frequently they are successful, to a point. But certainly it is
appropriate, even in times of war, that the Congress question and
challenge the Commander in Chief and our military generals. But that
challenge must be, no matter how vigorous, responsible, and honest. Our
domestic politics are quite partisan, true; and, frankly, I have been a
little disappointed at the nature of the debate I have heard this
afternoon. Republican this and Republican that and President Bush this
and President Bush that--it sounds more like politics than a sincere
effort to reach the proper decision about what our future course should
be.

Still, no one should deny that a congressional response to a war, a
war that over three-quarters of us voted to authorize, should rise
above political gain. With some exceptions, this Congress I think has
done so.
Truly, there is great concern in our land about the war in Iraq. It
is real and justified. I readily admit my concern. I will admit I am
not able to state with certainty today what our long-term course should
ultimately be or how this will all play out in the end. Therefore, I do
not contest the sincerity of those who will disagree with my
conclusions.
I can only state my views honestly and forthrightly because that is
what I have been elected to do, and that is what our soldiers who
depend on us for support expect of me.
First, I strongly believe this Nation cannot flop around, changing
its policy from month to month. That would be immature. It would result
in bad execution of this military effort, this war. It would demoralize
our soldiers who are walking the streets of Iraq this very moment
because we sent them there.
Additionally, this Congress funded their military operations. We
funded them. Our duly elected President, our Commander in Chief, has
directed the policy with the advice of his commanders in the field.
That is what it is. That is what is going on. That is what is
happening.
Now we had a great debate in April and May over whether to fund the
so called ``surge'' that President Bush and the Defense Department
requested. This is the surge that has, a few weeks ago, reached its
full strength. After the full debate, Congress could have said no to
the President on his request for the surge and not provided those
funds.
Fourteen Senators did vote no. But we said yes by an overwhelming
vote of 80 to 14. On May 24, less than 2 months ago, we authorized the
surge and, more importantly, we passed an emergency supplemental to
fund this surge. Nothing required us in Congress to do that. We
concluded it was the right thing to do, considering the serious
alternatives that existed.
Because of the concerns we all had at that time, we required an
interim report on July 15th, which has been received on time. We also
called for a complete report from General Petraeus, in September, on
the status of his efforts and our soldiers' work.
Of course, we had voted to confirm General Petraeus by a vote of 99
to 0 to command this operation. There was no mistake then concerning
the seriousness of the situation we were in. As General Petraeus
described the challenge:

It is difficult but not impossible.

We were in no way misled about the difficulties we faced, nor were we
unaware of the most serious ramifications of a failure in Iraq.
Thus, on May 24, this Congress, with an overwhelming majority, said:
Let's go with the surge. But we said: General Petraeus, we will expect
you to give us a full, complete, and honest report in September as to
how it is going with the good and the bad, and set out specific
benchmarks we want you to address. That he promised to, do, and off he
went.
Yet even before the personnel who were to be deployed to effect this
surge had even arrived in Iraq, the Democratic majority leader, Senator
Reid, who voted for the surge, to my dismay, declared it a failure.
While the troops were still arriving, the Democratic leader, the
majority leader of the Senate, declared the surge a failure.
To me it is unthinkable that this Congress would pull the plug on
this operation before it has had a fair chance to work, and we have had
a fair chance to evaluate its effectiveness. We voted for it 53 days
ago. What must the world community think, friend and adversary alike?
Does not such immaturity of action reflect poorly on us as a nation?
Nothing has occurred since that time of decision in May to justify
concluding that the situation in Iraq has significantly changed for the
worse? In fact, there are indications that some improvements have
occurred. We know that General Petraeus, last year, after two tours in
Iraq, 2 years over there, came home and last year wrote the Department
of

[[Page S9246]]

Defense doctrine on how to defeat an insurgency. His expertise was much
noted when we confirmed him to go take charge of the soldiers, sailors,
airmen, and marines who would effectuate this effort. Nowhere in his
manual did he ever suggest an insurgency could be defeated in 50 days,
or 90 days, or 120 days.
Victory, we must admit--if you read his manual--takes time,
diligence, determination, and smart application of politics, weaponry,
and forces. His manual sets out methods for how to achieve victory
against an insurgency, the methods for victory.
There is simply no basis at this point to conclude that our soldiers,
sailors, airmen, and marines have failed in executing this policy. In
fact, they are moving out with vigor. After seeing a reduction of
sectarian violence in Baghdad by two-thirds. This is the sectarian
violence, the murders that were occurring between hit squads, Shia and
Sunni, as a result of the violence kicked off by the attack by al-Qaida
on the Samara mosque, and their determined, effective policy to create
violence between the Shia and the Sunni. That is what al-Qaida set out
to do, and they succeeded last year.
We have seen that drop by two-thirds, although bombings still occur,
and the bombings are suicidal, many times with large bombs that kill
large numbers of civilians in shopping areas. But today some of our
troops are moving out of Baghdad into the toughest areas outside
Baghdad, such as the Dyala Province, and making, it appears, progress
there.
As our soldiers confront enemy strongholds, some of which have never
before been cleared, they demonstrate professionalism and courage that
reflect the finest qualities that have ever been demonstrated by
American soldiers.
Nor, let me add, has anything occurred that suggests this new
strategy is flawed and will not succeed and should be abandoned 53 days
since we agreed to see it forward.
So with respect, I conclude it would be irresponsible in the extreme
to have this bunch of politicians sitting in air-conditioned offices in
Washington reverse a strategy we approved 53 days ago. But that is
exactly what the Levin-Reed amendment would do.
I have tremendous respect for Senator Levin. He is a superb chairman
of the Armed Services Committee. But I do not agree with him on this
point. I do not believe this is right.
If you were a soldier or a marine and you had just moved into a tough
terrorist neighborhood in Iraq, following the directions given to you
by your President and your Congress, and you saw your comrades take
casualties, maybe killed in the course of executing that policy, all in
the belief that somebody up there back in Washington had finally
settled on a workable plan for victory, and then before your work is
half done, in less than 2 months, you learn the folks up there had now
changed their mind again, how would you feel? Wouldn't you think we do
not take our mission of our soldiers and what they are doing seriously?
We owe our military better than that. We owe them the same courage
and character they are displaying right now. On the birthday of our
Army, I was at a celebration and met a young soldier. I thanked him for
his service and began to explain my concern about the long deployments
we were asking them to undertake. He cut in, saying, ``Senator, we just
want to win.'' Before all that is just, this Congress must not fail
such men.
The Levin amendment is pernicious in more ways than I am able to
discuss at this time. It must not pass. We know a full review of our
policies will occur in September. We agreed on that in May. That is
critically important and valuable. I support such a review. I am open
minded about what we will decide to do in September.
I hope and pray we will be able to reduce the number of our soldiers
and begin a mature, effective way to reduce that deployment in Iraq,
but we will decide our next step then. To execute a precipitous
withdrawal from Iraq now, regardless of the conditions on the
battlefield, and regardless of the advice of our commanders in the
field, is unthinkable. It would be a stain on this Senate for years to
come.
Has anybody bothered to express an interest in what General Petraeus
has to say about it? Things don't always go well. My favorite statue in
Washington is one that conveys the most historical import, I think, the
one of General Grant right down here in front of the Capitol. He sits
astride his horse, his campaign hat pulled down, his coat
wrapped around, his head tilted slightly forward, a perfect picture of
determination in the face of great difficulty.

It is said 600,000 died in that war on both sides. Over 440,000
Americans died in World War II. This Nation has seen dark days before,
days darker than these. So let's keep our poise and our wits about us.
Let's give General Petraeus and his courageous military personnel a
chance to effect the strategy we agreed on and asked him to effect.
There are other important issues I will suggest to my colleagues as
we discuss the Levin amendment. I will note a few briefly.
The surge report. The language in our affirmation of the surge in May
called for a report that had benchmarks for improvements in Iraq. Those
benchmarks have been much commented upon, but these benchmarks for
improvement did not declare that all or any of the benchmarks must be
met by September or even by July 15, the time of our interim report.
They were to be objective markers by which we could judge progress and
lack of it, and they were surely not exhaustive of every issue and
challenge we faced in Iraq.
The fact that progress has been made in only half of those benchmark
areas does not mean, of course, we should now up and declare the new
operation a failure and that we should now cut and run. How could
anyone conclude this July 15 report that shows limited early progress
in only some areas means General Petraeus has failed? All the extra
soldiers arrived there only 3 weeks ago.
It is also important to note that the benchmarks seemed to focus on
the performance we wish to see by the central government, and they have
not been meeting their responsibilities, in my view. I had my sixth
visit there this spring. I was able to share that view and that
frustration of the American people with the top leaders in Iraq,
including Prime Minister Maliki. We believe they need to do more in the
central government.
But, for example, the benchmarks provided no credit at all for the
stunning progress that has occurred in the al-Anbar region, progress
that has resulted at the ground level where Sunni tribal leaders have
partnered with the marines to rout whole groups of al-Qaida operatives.
Similar progress, though smaller, it appears, seems to be occurring
in other areas at the local level. So the benchmarks do not consider
those events and whether progress is being made, but they are important
as we evaluate what our situation truly is. We must remember that while
sectarian violence continues, and it has occurred in large part as a
direct result of al-Qaida's strategy to foment it, safety and security
in the capital city is important in furthering political
reconciliation.
I wish I could agree with the idea of my able colleague Senator Levin
when he declared that peace and security in Iraq can only come as a
result of a political settlement. Thus, he would suggest if a
parliament cannot settle all of the difficult political issues on the
timetable we set, we must leave, because this is the only thing that
will make them agree on policy, our threatening to leave, and our
actual leaving, it appears, because his amendment would require an
actual departure from much of Iraq.
Well, I wish it were so easy. But, in truth, our commanders believe,
our State Department believes, and I believe, it is far more
complicated than that. Of course, a political settlement and
reconciliations are critical to any long-term stability. But will not a
reduction of violence and a more secure Baghdad be an event that will
make political progress more possible? That is what the generals are
telling us, that when the capital city is in a constant state of
violence and disorder, how can we expect the Parliament to be able to
function and to provide a peaceful settlement of the disputes that need
to be settled long term for a healthier Iraq?
I think we have a new strategy. We voted on it 53 days ago. We agreed
to

[[Page S9247]]

fund it. That is what the Congress does, we either put up the money or
we do not put up the money. By a vote of 80 to 14 we put up the money
to fund this strategy. We asked for a report in September, and now we
have an amendment that has garnered quite a lot of political headlines
and provided a lot of forums, a lot of ability to come forward on the
floor of the Senate to attack President Bush and Republicans, but it is
not a very responsible thing.
The responsible thing is for us to do what we said 53 days ago--to
demand a full, complete, and honest report by General Petraeus in
September, and at that point to evaluate the situation in Iraq and
establish a strategy and a policy going forward from there that serves
our national interest.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The distinguished Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I rise to discuss an amendment I can't
offer right now because of the parliamentary situation, but I would
like to discuss the amendment with my colleagues so they know it is
coming and what it does.
My amendment to the Department of Defense authorization bill is meant
to strengthen our efforts to verify if people in the United States are
here legally to do their work. It deals with the Department of Defense
because when it comes to the Department itself and to contractors who
do Defense Department work, we ought to make sure that everybody who is
working here has been here legally. That is for two reasons: One,
because that is what the law says. You should not be in the country if
you don't have the permission of our Government legally to be here. No.
2, one of the things we are concerned about in enforcing of the
immigration laws is to make sure that terrorists don't get into the
country. We should be particularly concerned that we don't have people
with terrorist connections working for our contractors or working for
the Government itself.
Without a doubt, we have an illegal immigration problem. That was
evident from the legitimate hoorah people raised against the bill and
against the amnesty provisions of it and the 2 weeks of debate we had
this spring on the issue. People are crossing our borders each day to
live and work in the United States. Some of these individuals may have
innocent motives but some may not. There may be some illegal or
undocumented individuals living in the shadows who aim to bypass law
enforcement and do our country harm. We don't live in a pre-9/11 world
anymore, so we must do all we can to protect our country and our
assets.
My amendment would do two things. First, it would require all Federal
Government agencies and departments to use what we call the basic pilot
program, also known as the Electronic Employment Verification System.
This would be for all departments of Government. I will soon
demonstrate that a lot of departments are already doing it. But we
ought to, particularly in a bill such as this, make sure the Department
of Defense is using it in every respect.
The second part of the amendment would require all Department of
Defense contractors to use the basic pilot to check the eligibility of
their workers. The reason this is needed and why it is appropriate in
the bill before us is, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
makes it unlawful for employers to knowingly--and I emphasize
``knowingly''--hire and employ aliens not eligible to work in this
country. It required employers to check the identity and work
eligibility documents for all new employees.
Today, if the documents provided by an employee reasonably appear on
their face to be genuine, then the employer has met its document review
obligation, and it has reason to believe it hired somebody who was
legally in the country. So they are off the hook. They can't be fined
or any other action taken against the employer. But beyond those
documents, the employer cannot solicit any additional documents from
the worker, or they would face allegations of employment
discrimination. The easy availability, as we all know, of counterfeit
documents has made a mockery of that law that we passed in 1986 which,
quite frankly, I was here and I voted for. We thought it would solve
all of our problems.
Well, we went from 1 million people being here illegally to 12
million people, so obviously it didn't solve anything. That is because
fake documents are produced by the millions and can be obtained
cheaply. Thus, our immigration policies benefit unscrupulous employers
who do not mind hiring illegal aliens but want to show that they have
met the legal requirements, and then the word ``knowingly'' being in
the law, if they have reason to believe legally, even if they are here
illegally, unless the employer knows absolutely they are not here
illegally, then they are off the hook. The problem is, you have a lot
of these employers who know that even though the documents are
fraudulent, that the person is here illegally, they hire them and never
get caught. So we have tried to put this basic pilot program in place
to be one step beyond where we were in 1986.
Now at the same time, our policies harm employers who don't want to
hire illegal aliens but have no choice but to accept those fraudulent
documents that they know have a good likelihood of being that way. In
response to the illegal hiring of immigrants, Congress created this
basic pilot program in 1996. This program allows employers to check the
status of their workers by checking one's Social Security number and
alien identification number against the Social Security Administration
and Homeland Security databases.
Since 1996, the system has been updated and improved. It is a Web-
based program. Employers can go online quickly and very easily when
hiring an individual. It has been voluntary since its inception.
The basic pilot program was originally authorized in 1996,
reauthorized in 2001, and expanded and extended again in 2003.
Originally, the authorization allowed six States to participate. In
2003, the extension allowed employers in all 50 States to voluntarily
use the program. The immigration bill before the Senate I have already
referred to, last year and this year, would have required all employers
to use the basic pilot program over a period of time, meaning phasing
it in. Both the administration and Congress were poised to pass
legislation mandating participation and argued that this employment
verification system using Social Security was crucial to enforcing the
laws on the books and getting around this problem of fraudulent
documents. Moreover, during the debate on immigration this year, it was
argued that the system was a needed tool for employers to check the
eligibility of their workers.

I had an opportunity to have a meeting way back in January of this
year with Secretary Chertoff about requiring all agencies to use the
system and extending the requirement to contractors that do business
with the Federal Government. The Department of Homeland Security
responded by saying that 403 Federal agencies are participating in the
basic pilot program. Moreover, the Department claimed it was exploring
ways to verify all executive branch new hires, and its goal was to
ensure that all new hires in the executive branch are verified through
the basic pilot program by the end of fiscal year 2007; in other words,
3 months from now.
Currently, all congressional offices are required to use the basic
pilot program. My office uses this process of checking everybody who
applies to work for me, and if we are going to hire them, check with
the basic pilot program--in other words, Social Security--to make sure
that everything matches up. Since more than 400 agencies are already
using it, including congressional offices, requiring all agencies
beyond the 400 to participate would seem to me to not be overly
burdensome and something we ought to do if we want to make sure we
don't hire people who are here illegally; and, No. 2, that the Federal
Government would set an example for other employers; and, lastly, as
the effort to control the border has something to do with stopping
terrorists from coming to this country, to make sure that we don't have
people like that working for the Federal Government.
With this goal in mind of Homeland Security to do this for all
executive branch hires by the end of this fiscal year, it seems to me
to be reasonable to make sure we move to make sure that it is done. My
amendment, then, clarifies, as I see it, what is existing

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law--that all agencies and all departments must use the basic pilot
program and verify the status of their workers. My amendment is needed
to push their participation in this program.
Congress and the administration would then set an example for the
rest of the country. My amendment would also require those who do
business with the Department of Defense to use the basic pilot program.
This gets to the second part of the bill that deals with contractors
working for the Federal Government, working for the Defense Department.
There have been many examples of people here illegally working at
military bases and installations in the past few years. There have been
instances where Government contractors are employing people who are
here illegally and allowing them to work in sensitive areas. I will
share some examples.
In April 2005, 86 of 167 employees of a company called Naval Coating
Incorporated were found to be hired illegally. This company was a
military contractor that painted ships at naval stations San Diego.
More than half of this company's workers were people here illegally.
Yet our Department of Defense was doing business with this company that
had more than half of its people illegally employed because they were
here illegally.
Last year, hundreds of illegal workers were found working for a Texas
company which makes millions of ready-to-eat meals for our troops in
Iraq. Last July, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested more
than 60 illegal immigrants at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. In January
of this year, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency arrested
nearly 40 illegal immigrants hired by contractors working at three
military bases: Fort Benning, Creech Air Force Base, and Quantico
Marine Base. One of the illegal workers was reportedly a member of the
dangerous MS-13 gang.
While the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency has done its job
to find unauthorized workers at secure sites, illegal aliens should not
be hired in the first place. One way to get at the problem is to
require them to use this basic pilot program up front like every
congressional office does, or at least is supposed to do under the law.
That is why my amendment is needed, requiring that those who do
business with the Federal Government should be held to the same
standard as our executive department agencies, of which as I said, 400,
according to Secretary Chertoff, are already doing it. So you might say
that half of my amendment may not be needed because he wants them all
to do it. But I think we are better off if the law says that they do
it, and so I included that in the amendment.
So we need to do this like other people in Government are doing to
make sure it is done because we need to have the Federal Government
setting an example requiring those who do business with the Federal
Government to be held, then, to the same standard as our executive
department agencies. This amendment will provide the tools to all
employers who work with the Department of Defense and require
Government agencies to lead the Nation in verifying its workers.
I know now the parliamentary situation is such that I can't offer
this amendment at this point. I want to explain to everybody as I
have--and why I come to the floor now--so that before this bill is
voted on final passage, I think before the end of this week, we will
have a chance to deal with something that I see as very important from
the standpoint of making sure that laws are abided by, making sure the
Federal Government as an employer is setting a good example, and making
sure that we in this country use all the tools necessary to make sure
that people who work for anybody using the Social Security system as
that tool are here legally and can then be employed. It overcomes,
then, the problems we have with fraudulent documents and, lastly,
securing our borders.

Who wants to work here should be a tool to make sure terrorists are
not working for anybody who works for the Government, meaning a
government contractor or for a government agency. Particularly, that
ought to be of most concern to us that we do not have that type of
person working for the Defense Department--because of national
security--or contractors who are doing work for the Defense Department,
which is central to our national security.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). The distinguished Senator from
Iowa.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have come to the floor today to
reiterate my intention, along with the senior Senator from California,
Mrs. Feinstein, and the senior Senator from Nebraska, Mr. Hagel, to
offer legislation to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba.
Now, again, we have decided not to offer the measure on the bill
before us, the National Defense Authorization Act. But we certainly
will be offering it as an amendment to the Defense appropriations bill
when that bill comes to the floor. One way or another, we intend to get
this legislation passed this year.
I think there is remarkable agreement on the need to find a way to
close this prison. All our closest allies have urged that Guantanamo be
closed, as have many leaders from across the political spectrum in the
United States.
Last June, after three detainees committed suicide in a single day,
President Bush acknowledged the prison has damaged America's reputation
abroad. He said:

No question, Guantanamo sends a signal to some of our
friends--provides an excuse, for example, to say the United
States is not upholding the values that they are trying to
encourage other countries to adhere to.

The President said:

I'd like to close Guantanamo.

More recently, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice have urged the prison be shut down.
On March 23, the Washington Post, citing ``senior administration
officials,'' reported that Secretary Gates had ``repeatedly argued that
the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had become so tainted
abroad that legal proceedings at Guantanamo would be viewed as
illegitimate.''
According to the Post, Secretary Gates ``told President Bush and
others that it should be shut down as quickly as possible.''
Let's make no mistake about it; the current detainees at Guantanamo
do include a number of extremely dangerous terrorists, with the
determination and ability--if given the opportunity--to inflict harm
upon the United States and its citizens. Among the detainees are 14
senior leaders of al-Qaida, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has
confessed to being a mastermind of the September 11 attacks, as well as
others. We must--and we can--hold these enemy combatants in maximum
security conditions elsewhere.
But the critics of Guantanamo are right. The 5-year-old prison at
Guantanamo is a stain on the honor of our country. By holding people at
Guantanamo without charge, without judicial review, without appropriate
legal counsel--and in the past subjecting many of them to what amounts
to torture, regardless of how you want to dress it up--by doing all
those things, we have forfeited the moral high ground and stand as
hypocrites in the eyes of the world.
As Secretary Gates has argued, any legal proceedings or convictions
now taking place on Guantanamo will be viewed as illegitimate in the
eyes of the world.
Perhaps most seriously, from a pragmatic standpoint, maintaining the
prison at Guantanamo is simply counterproductive. It has become a
propaganda bonanza and recruitment tool for Islamic fundamentalists. It
alienates our friends and allies. It detracts from our ability to
regain the moral high ground and rally the world against the terrorists
who threaten us.
The administration has repeatedly described detainees at Guantanamo
as ``the worst of the worst,'' or, as former Secretary of Defense,
Donald Rumsfeld, once described them, the ``most dangerous, best-
trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.'' Unquestionably,
some of the detainees fit these descriptions. However, an exhaustive
study of Guantanamo detainees conducted by the nonpartisan and highly
regarded National Journal, last year, came to the following
conclusions:
A large percentage--perhaps the majority--of the detainees were not
captured on any battlefield, let alone on ``the battlefield in
Afghanistan,'' as President Bush once asserted.

[[Page S9249]]

Secondly, fewer than--fewer than--20 percent of the detainees have
ever been al-Qaida members.
Third, many scores--and perhaps hundreds--of the detainees were not
even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone al-Qaida members.
Fourth, the majority of the people at Guantanamo were not captured by
U.S. forces but, rather, handed over by reward-seeking Pakistanis and
Afghan warlords and by villagers of highly dubious reliability.
For example, one of the detainees in Guantanamo is a man who was
conscripted by the Taliban to work as an assistant cook. The U.S.
Government's ``evidence'' against this detainee consists, in its
entirety, of the following--keep in mind, the evidence against this
detainee consists, in its entirety, of the following--

a. Detainee is associated with the Taliban.
i. The detainee indicates that he was conscripted into the
Taliban.
b. Detainee engaged in hostilities against the U.S. or its
coalition partners.
i. The detainee admits he was a cook's assistant for
Taliban forces in Narim, Afghanistan under the command of
Haji Mullah Baki.
ii.

Get this--

ii. Detainee fled from Narim to Kabul during the Northern
Alliance attack and surrendered to the Northern Alliance.

That is it. That is the evidence they have against this detainee. He
was forced by the Taliban to be a cook. When he saw his opportunity to
get out of there, he escaped and went to the northern forces and
surrendered to them. Now he sits in Guantanamo.
What kind of justice is this?
Well, the situation at Guantanamo is rather personal with me. Not
only was I stationed there for some time back when I was a Navy pilot--
and I have since been back, of course, to visit--but more personal, in
July of 1970, I was a rather young staff person for the Select
Committee on U.S. Involvement in Southeast Asia of the House of
Representatives. I was working with a congressional delegation on a
factfinding mission to Vietnam in the summer of 1970, and through a
series of circumstances--and because of the bravery of a young
Vietnamese man who had been in the tiger cages on Con Son Island and
who was let out--now, why was he let out? Because usually when you got
to the tiger cages, you were never seen again.
Well, the South Vietnamese had these prisons put up on Con Son
Island. Actually, they were built by the French when the French ruled
Indo-China. So the French built these prisons on an island off the
coast. The Vietnamese took them over and then built these so-called
tiger cages, which were hidden within the prison so no one could find
them.
Cao Nguyen Loi was sentenced to the tiger cages because he led a
student protest at Saigon University. He was the student leader at
Saigon University in 1969, early 1970. Because he led a protest against
the war, the police picked him up. The South Vietnamese Army picked him
up and sent him out to Con Son Island.
No one knew who he was. But the students refused to go back to class
until their student leader was released. It was time to take the exams,
and this was a big deal for families. They were putting pressure on the
university, and finally the Government let Cao Nguyen Loi go. They told
him at the time, though, that if he ever said anything, they would kill
his brother because his brother was also in the tiger cages.
Well, this young man, very bravely, sought me out, along with Don
Luce. Don Luce was a young man who I think at that time had been
working for the World Council of Churches in Vietnam. If I am not
mistaken, I think he was a native of Vermont. Yes, Don Luce was a
native of the State of Vermont. He had been over there teaching the
Vietnamese how to grow sweet potatoes, agricultural things.
Well, Don Luce had known this young man. I had sought out Don Luce
because Luce had written a book about Vietnam called ``Vietnam--The
Unheard Voices.'' So in preparation for this trip to Vietnam, I read
the book because I felt that Congressmen should hear both sides. So I
read this book. I never met Don Luce before, but I was intrigued by
this book, that there was a large sector--I questioned at the time--of
South Vietnamese who were opposed to the war. We were led to believe
quite differently, of course.
So Don Luce brought this young man to see me to tell me about the
existence of the tiger cages. These tiger cages had been rumored for a
long time. In fact, the year before, in 1969, a young Congressman by
the name of John Conyers went over with a Congressman, I believe it was
Father Drinan, Bob Drinan, and they had inquired about the existence of
the tiger cages. They were told this was Communist propaganda, no such
thing existed. Our military denied it. The Nixon administration denied
it. The South Vietnamese Government denied it: There was no such thing.
This was Communist propaganda.
Well, this young man, who came to see me, said: They are out there
because I was in them. But they told me if I talked, they would kill my
brother, so I have to place my trust in you because someone has to
expose them. I said: Well, I don't know if I could or not because I
would have to get a couple of Congressmen to go out there. It was on an
island. We had to get a plane, fly out to this remote island. It would
take a whole day. Then he told me: You would not find them unless you
have a map. I will draw you a map. So he sat down and he drew me a map
of how to find the tiger cages. He said: Because, you see, there are a
lot of prison camps on Con Son Island. There are about five different
prison camps and they all look the same. Unless you know what you are
looking for, you will never find the tiger cages, because they are in
one prison camp and you have to know how to find them. He drew me a
map. He couldn't quite remember exactly, but he knew to look for these
certain symbols, these certain signs, these certain things he
remembered. So I took the map.

I then went to see Congressman Gus Hawkins of California and laid
this out for him and said there might be a possibility that we could
find out once and for all whether these tiger cages existed. He said he
would go. We needed another Congressman. William Anderson, Congressman
William R. Anderson from Tennessee, when he heard the story, said: I
will go.
Keep in mind, Congressman William R. Anderson had until that time
been a supporter of the Vietnam war. He wrote a book once, which is one
of my favorite books. It was called ``Nautilus 90 North.'' This same
Congressman Anderson was the first skipper of the first nuclear
submarine called the Nautilus. He was a very famous guy at the time
because he was the first one who took a nuclear sub underneath the
North Pole and he wrote a book about the Nautilus submarine called
``Nautilus 90 North.'' He retired from the Navy and was elected to the
House from Tennessee.
Congressman Anderson, Congressman Hawkins, and I took off with Don
Luce. We went out to the islands. I am not going to give you the whole
story, but armed with the map, we were able to find the tiger camps.
When we found them, we were told by one Red Walton, who was the USAID
director--public safety director--that we had no business being there.
Oh, I might say, before we got out there, this same Red Walton had told
us these prison camps were more like a Boy Scout camp. They took us to
some of the prison camps and they weren't all that bad for prisons, I
guess. But again, armed with a map, we found the tiger cages and the
suffering that we saw there, the inhumanity we saw there, was something
you never shake. I was armed with a camera. I had my camera, so I took
pictures. Of course, we had two Congressmen, William Anderson and Gus
Hawkins, there.
Armed with that information and coming back to the States, we
published the pictures and got the story out. It became a worldwide
story. The prisoners were released because of the pressure that was put
upon the South Vietnamese government. They then began to tell their
stories. But there was one picture I took that was in Life Magazine. It
was of a young Buddhist monk who looked up through the bars of these
tiger cages as we looked down on him, and he said in Vietnamese--we had
Don Luce as an interpreter--he said: I am here for only one reason:
Because I speak out for peace, and no matter how long I stay here, I
will continue to speak out for peace.
I took a picture of that young Buddhist monk. Yet before the
prisoners

[[Page S9250]]

were all released, he was beaten to death.
While I have since gone back to Con Son Island and visited his grave,
the tiger cages are now a memorial, like a museum for people to see, of
all the horrors they inflicted on so many hundreds of people. People
were shackled together in awful conditions--awful conditions.
This weekend I was handed a paper done by Vaughan Bagley. I visited
with her. She was doing a paper on the tiger cages of Con Son. She
wrote a paper about it. She did some very good research. Vaughan is a
high school student, but she did a lot of great research. She went back
and looked at all of the congressional hearings that were held on this,
and she quoted Representative Hawkins. Representative Hawkins stated at
the congressional hearings in 1970:

Con Son is a symbol of how some American officials will
cooperate in corruption and torture because they too want to
see the war continued and the government they put in power
protected.

Well, as she went on to point out, she said:

Unfortunately, however, in their democratic crusade,
America lost the very principles of freedom and equality that
they purported to defend, and ultimately violated Article 13
of the Geneva Accords of 1949.

A former prisoner testified that the clear violation of these
principles:

No matter what medical problem the prisoner has: TB,
Diphtheria, he is still thrown in with all the others who are
not sick, all eat out of the same bowl, sleep together,
shackled to the same rope. I know of no other place on Earth
where human lives are so cheap as in Con Son.

Congressman Hawkins argued: Con Son is the type of not looking at our
own faults and atrocities that endangers our American prisoners of war
held by the Communists.
Vaughan Bagley did a great job on her research. What she pointed out
in her paper was that in our pursuit of democratic ideals and democracy
around the world, we can't condone, harbor, or support places like the
tiger cages of Con Son Island, Abu Ghraib, or Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
I tell this story because now I think my colleagues get some idea of
why I feel so strongly about Guantanamo. It has for me the same smell,
the same awful vision of Con Son Island. You see, in both cases these
prisons were off on remote islands. Why? Well, to keep away the press,
to keep people from asking questions about what was going on. Once you
were taken off the island, chances are you were never seen again.
That is what has happened at Guantanamo. Guantanamo has become the
United States Con Son Island. It has become like the tiger cages on Con
Son Island. The more the world knows about it, the harder it is for us
to argue from kind of a morally high standpoint of supporting the
Geneva Conventions or the rule of law.
Well, at the time of the discovery of the tiger cages, the United
States Government had been insisting that the North Vietnamese abide by
the Geneva Conventions. Yet here we were condoning, funding, and
supervising the torture not only of Vietnamese prisoners of war but of
civilians. People such as this young guide who was caught up and held
by the Taliban as a cook, who escaped, who probably didn't want to
fight for anybody--a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.
There are disturbing parallels between what transpired on Con Son
Island nearly four decades ago and what has happened at Guantanamo in
recent years. As I said in both cases, prisons were deliberately set up
on remote islands, clearly with the intention of limiting scrutiny and
restricting access. In both cases, detainees were not classified as
prisoners of war, expressly to deny them the protection of the Geneva
Conventions. In both cases, detainees were deprived of any right to due
process, judicial review, or a fair trial. They were simply held
indefinitely in isolation in legal limbo. In both cases, when the
mistreatment of detainees was exposed, the United States stood accused
of hypocrisy and of betraying its most sacred values and violating
international law.

We need to reverse the damage Guantanamo has done to our reputation
and to our ability to wage an effective fight against the terrorists
who attacked us on September 11 of 2001. The essential first step must
be to close the prison at Guantanamo as expeditiously as possible. The
legislation that Senator Feinstein, Senator Hagel, and I have would
accomplish this within 1 year of the date of enactment.
Under the provisions of our legislation, one, the President shall
close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. All detainees shall be
removed from the facility. No detainee shall be transferred to a
detention facility under U.S. custody located outside the United
States.
We heard all about these other little prisons around the world that,
well, maybe they are held by other countries, but they are supervised
by us. Our legislation says it can't be transferred there either. No
later than 3 months after enactment, the President shall submit a
report to Congress describing plans for closing Guantanamo and removing
the detainees, and the President shall keep Congress currently informed
of steps taken to implement the legislation.
That is basically our legislation. It is very clear, very
straightforward. As I said, we were going to offer it on the Defense
authorization bill. We have all agreed not to do so, but that we
definitely will be seeing this coming up on the Defense appropriations.
In closing, on this issue, the United States has lost its way both in
Iraq and at Guantanamo. We need to wage a smarter, more focused, and
more effective fight against the Islamic terrorists who threaten us,
and we must do so in ways that do not give credence to the American
antipropaganda and do not rally more recruits to their cause. To that
end, we must close the prison at Guantanamo as soon as possible. Our
amendment has won the enthusiastic endorsement of Human Rights Watch,
Human Rights First, Amnesty International, and the American Civil
Liberties Union. We currently have 14 bipartisan cosponsors here in the
Senate. I urge our colleagues to join us in cosponsoring this
legislation.

Levin-Reed Amendment

Before I yield the floor, I also want to talk for a minute on the
bill--the Levin-Reed amendment--because I think it offers the best
prospect for accomplishing the goals of a more focused and effective
campaign against the terrorists.
For 4 long years, President Bush has said that as the Iraqis step up
to their responsibilities, the United States will be able to step down.
Today it is painfully clear that the opposite is the case. The Iraqi
military and Government will only step up to their responsibilities
once it is clear that the United States is stepping down. The Levin-
Reed amendment says the United States will begin troop redeployment
within 120 days and remove most American combat forces from Iraq by
April of next year. This acknowledges what has long been obvious to our
commanders: There can be no military solution to the mess in Iraq. At
the same time, by signaling our intention to redeploy by next spring,
we will create powerful incentives to force compromise within the
deadlocked Iraqi Government and to compel Iraq's neighbors to play a
more active and constructive role in pacifying that country.
Again, I say this only of myself, but there is no guarantee this
approach will work--will succeed. There is no guarantee the Iraqis will
be willing or able to compromise and come together in a genuine
government of national reconciliation. However, the only certainty is
that our current force is a formula for more failure, more deadlock
within the Iraqi Government, more death and destruction for both Iraq
and America.
New developments this past week have driven home the urgency of the
change of course proposed by the Levin-Reed amendment. Last week, we
learned we are now spending an astronomical $10 billion a month in
Iraq. Last week, the administration issued the required progress report
on the benchmarks for Iraq. What did it show? It showed the Government
in Baghdad has failed to meet any of the benchmarks for political and
economic reform. The Iraqis have failed to make progress in passing a
law governing the sharing of oil revenues.
They have failed to make progress in allowing former Baath Party
members to return to their jobs. They have failed to make progress in
disarming the militias. They have failed to make progress in organizing
new provincial

[[Page S9251]]

elections. Indeed, the only thing the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds have
agreed upon in Parliament is that they will go on vacation during the
month of August.
Now, there was one glimmer of good news in the report, and that was,
the U.S. military has had some success since January in improving the
security situation, although the overall levels of violence and mayhem
are unchanged. Well, limited success should come as no surprise to
anybody. We all appreciate the professionalism, courage, and capability
of our Armed Forces. It would be astonishing if an additional 30,000
troops didn't see at least some small improvement in security.
There is one unfortunate thing about this. These modest gains are all
being accomplished by U.S. troops, not Iraqis. Because the surge is not
sustainable, even these modest gains are ephemeral.
Meanwhile, a new report by the National Counterterrorism Center
concludes that al-Qaida has grown stronger than at any time since 9/11.
In other words, while the U.S. military and intelligence assets have
been massively sidetracked in Iraq over the last 4 years, al-Qaida has
been able to regroup elsewhere, with most in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As a CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence told a House committee:

We see more al-Qaida training, more al-Qaida money, and
more al-Qaida communication.

Indeed, the U.S. invasion of Iraq has been the gift that keeps on
giving to al-Qaida. There was no al-Qaida presence in Iraq before the
invasion. Now a home-grown organization, loosely affiliated with al-
Qaida, calling themselves ``al-Qaida in Mesopotamia,'' has emerged.
What's more, as previous intelligence reports have concluded, America's
ongoing occupation of Iraq has been a powerful recruitment tool not
only for al-Qaida, but for many new extremist organizations, some of
them sprouting up spontaneously in western countries, including Britain
and Spain.
So, Mr. President, we have reached an extraordinary juncture
regarding the current failed policy in Iraq. We have reached the point,
frankly, where either you side with the President and his demand that
we stay the course in pursuit of what he calls victory--although the
President has never really defined what that victory is--or you side
with the American people and our military commanders who have concluded
that there is no military solution in Iraq. You either support this
endless, pointless war or you support a smaller, more focused campaign
against the terrorists who truly threaten us. Those are the choices in
the current Senate debate.
On our side of the aisle, we Democrats and the American people have
made our choice to chart a new direction. I am confident that as more
and more of our friends on the other side of the aisle make that choice
in the days and weeks ahead, we will ultimately prevail.
The conflict in Iraq can only be solved through political compromise
and reconciliation in Baghdad and through aggressive diplomatic
engagement with Iraq's neighbors and across the Middle East. So it is
time to chart a new course. The approach embodied in the Levin-Reed
amendment offers us our best hope for extricating ourselves from this
quagmire in Iraq and retaking the offensive against al-Qaida and other
terrorist groups.
I am proud to be a cosponsor, and I urge all my colleagues to support
the Levin-Reed amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, let me say to my good friend
from Iowa that while there are so many things in which we find
ourselves in agreement as the months and years go by, in this area we
find disagreement. I have to say this. I wasn't going to mention
Guantanamo, but since that is a subject of interest to everybody--and
it certainly has the interest of the Senator from Iowa--I only mention
this. I have done this before on the Senate floor. I am very much
concerned about this obsession we seem to have in this country
politically to take care of these terrorists who are responsible for
committing acts and killing Americans.
I was down at Guantanamo several times. One time was right after
everything started escalating and they started arriving there.
Everybody was concerned about the methods of questioning these
individuals, interrogating the prisoners. I remember going down and
seeing a lot of them doing everything they could to antagonize the
troops that we had down there to police that situation. It was really
kind of pitiful. You sit there and look at these people, and these are
prisoners who probably have never eaten better in their lives, have
never had better medical attention in their lives, have never really
lived better than they are living in Guantanamo. Yet these are
individuals who are terrorists. These are the worst, and some have
killed Americans. We all seem to have this propensity to be more
concerned about them than we are for the lives of Americans.
I want to give a different perspective. I have had the honor, I
believe, of being in the Iraqi AOR--not always in Iraq, but the area of
responsibility--more than any other Member. I have watched this on a
monthly basis since we have gotten into this thing. As I look at it, I
very carefully chose the word of ``invasion'' on Iraq as opposed to a
``liberation'' of Iraq.

I remember so well right after the first Iraqi war, I was honored to
go over to Iraq the day that it was actually declared to be over. This
was in Kuwait City. We had a thing called the ``first freedom flight.''
Tony Cohelo was on that flight with me. Certainly, the Chair remembers
him well.
We also had one of the Kuwaiti nobility and his young daughter with
us at the time. We got there, and they were burning the oil fields. It
was obscure. Even during the daylight hours you could not see anything.
The Iraqis didn't know that the war was over--those who were down there
at that time. I remember so well seeing the devastation.
This little girl, I think, was 7 years old at the time. They wanted
to go back to Kuwait to go to their mansion on the Persian Gulf, a
beautiful place, so she could go up in her bedroom and see her little
dolls and animals. I remember going up there with her, and we found out
that their residence had been used as one of Saddam Hussein's torture
chambers. I remember going up to her bedroom with her and, in fact,
that bedroom had been used as a torture chamber, one of Saddam
Hussein's headquarters. There were body parts--ears, hands, just strewn
all around the room. You thought: What kind of a monster could this
Saddam Hussein be? This guy had spent 30 years of his life terrorizing
his fellow citizens. We saw things like a little boy with his ear cut
off. He was 9. The reason it was done was he had a little American flag
in his pocket, and I guess they found that on him, and they considered
that to be inappropriate.
Looking into mass graves and hearing the stories of individuals going
through grinders and begging to go head first so they would not torture
them quite as long, being dropped into vats of acid, begging to be
dropped in feet first. These are the kinds of terrorists that we are
talking about over there. This is what Iraq was like. This is what
Saddam Hussein was like.
While I don't want to get into the debate about weapons of mass
destruction, I never had that as the argument. It is a fact that
training was taking place there; whether it was al-Qaida or not we
don't know. In Salman Pak in Iraq, they were training terrorists to
hijack airplanes. Whether they trained in that area the particular 9/11
perpetrators, I have no way of knowing. Nonetheless, this is something
that had to be--all you had to do was look into the mass graves and
hear the stories about weddings taking place and how they would raid
them and rape the women and bury them alive. That was the scene, and
that is what we were doing over there.
I really came to the floor to voice my objection to the Levin-Reed
amendment, No. 2087. Winston Churchill once said:

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and
easy. . . . Always remember, however sure you are that you
could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other
man did not think he also had a chance.

That was just as true in World War II when Churchill made the
statement as

[[Page S9252]]

it is today. Today, we face an enemy that is determined and willing to
go to any means of terror and violence to win. He cannot be negotiated
with. You cannot negotiate with a terrorist. We keep hearing that we
need to negotiate with them, but we cannot do that. They will not be
satisfied until the whole world is brought under their dreadful
ideology. We have seen this kind before in Stalin and Hitler, but never
before has our enemy metastasized this way.
In a way, you could say it is more dangerous now than it was back
then during Hitler and Stalin because the mentality is different. These
are people who want to die and who are willing to die. This is their
way of going to heaven. It is a totally different environment than
under the other cultures in the different wars. There is no centralized
headquarters or one leader that we can eliminate. There is no country
involved. I don't think we have ever been involved in a war against an
enemy who didn't have a country. When you defeat a country, you win the
war. Well, there is nothing centralized that we can point to. Victory
would come the way it always has: Destroy the enemy, undermine the
support network, and expose the fact that they cannot win.
Any plan to leave Iraq before we have had a chance to understand the
outcome of the troop surge tells the enemy, first of all, they have
been successful and that their methods worked. Those individuals who
were perpetrating the crimes of terrorism will come back and do them
again. It gives them patience to wait us out.
Do you believe they do not watch our news or that they are not
watching us right now, scouring our media for any chink in our resolve?
Their survival depends on it, and they cannot win by force of arms.
They can only win by attacking our resolve.
Our country represents the light of freedom and democracy. Yet I fear
that we have begun a terrible introspective and downward cycle. Our
resolve lasts for a few months, or maybe a year, but all it takes is
enough time and then we break. Our enemy knows this. Look at our
mission in Somalia. I remember it so well. So does the Presiding
Officer. They were dragging the naked bodies through the streets of
Mogadishu and our resolve was broken. Look at our reaction to the
bombings in Lebanon at Khobar Towers. Look at Vietnam.
I am saying that we have to realize that while this introspection
guarantees our freedom, it is also our greatest weakness. I recognize
there have been mistakes made in Iraq. In his January 10 speech, the
President also recognized this and has taken full responsibility for
mistakes, which are made in every war. Yet we still find ourselves in
difficult situations about the best way ahead.
These decisions affect many lives, both of our soldiers and the
American people they pledged to protect.
We should debate. That is what the Senate body intends to do. It is
what we have been doing. But how we fight and when we leave will
determine the fight our grandchildren face. I think we all agree that
it would be disastrous to leave Iraq precipitously. If we do, we know
what we can expect: increased levels of violence and the spread of
extremist ideology. Iraq itself would collapse into anarchy. We know
this.
A personal friend of mine, DIA Director General Maples, said this:

Continued coalition presence is the primary counter to a
breakdown in central authority. Such a breakdown would have
grave consequences for the people of Iraq, stability in the
region, and U.S. strategic interests.

DNI John Negroponte and CIA Director General Hayden have also agreed
with that statement and analysis. It is not too late to avoid this
breakdown. I don't think it is time to start cutting our losses and
hope all of this will somehow disappear, somehow it will go away. If we
can assist Iraq to reach the point of sustainable self-governance, then
we can bring defeat to our enemies and bring stability to the region.
We all want this to happen.

To those who say we cannot win, I look to Bosnia. I have to say, Mr.
President, I was wrong in this case. That was a situation that many
said and I said was intractable, that we would be bogged down for years
and suffer thousands of casualties. I really believed this situation. I
went back to Bosnia. It is peaceful. This is directly because of our
military involvement. So I learned a lesson in Bosnia.
When I heard President Bush ask for our support for a troop surge, I
heard the same message from many soldiers whom I have talked to in
Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit, Balad, Mosul, and other areas. They said
they want to fight the enemy there and not at home. This is what the
troops have told me on these 14 trips I have made over there. They said
they are in a fight to win and that they will accomplish the mission.
Their morale is very high, and they back this up by reenlisting in
record numbers.
I watched one of the Sunday shows, and they are trying to say: Look
at the dissatisfying level. You can ask a question of all the troops
over there and pull out some kind of answer that can be misinterpreted.
The true test is those individuals who are fighting the hardest and
facing the most risk are the very ones who have the highest
reenlistment rate we have seen in modern history. We are seeing
reenlistments in record numbers right now, and the sacrifice our
service men and women pay demand we pursue every possibility to leave
stability in our wake.
The permanent Iraqi Government has only been in power since May. Many
of the leaders have never had any kind of opportunity to run any kind
of government before, let alone under the terrible circumstances they
face. While Saddam was in power, they were in jail or were in exile.
They were on the outside. Now they have to build coalitions and a
democracy that took us many years to achieve in this country. I think
sometimes we forget that fact.
Last week, Hassan al-Suneid, a Shiite legislator and adviser to Prime
Minister al-Maliki, was quoted in the Washington Post. This is what he
said, an adviser to al-Maliki:

If the Americans withdraw, the militias and the armed
groups will attack each other, and that means a sure civil
war. What concerns me really is that U.S. troops might submit
to the Democrats' decision and withdraw without thinking
about Iraq's situation and what will happen to the Iraqi
people.

We owe it to the sacrifice of the brave servicemember, we owe it to
the Iraqi people, and we owe it to our children and grandchildren. Give
our soldiers everything they need to win, and if Iraq doesn't step up,
then it will be time to go but not until then.
We haven't given enough time to see if the surge is working. July 15
was supposed to be an interim White House update. We know the 16
benchmarks. It is my understanding eight are proceeding as planned,
eight are not, and two are mixed signals. We know the surge has enabled
a number of things to happen, such as a new engagement strategy, which
I will talk about in a minute. It is called the joint security
stations. We have gotten a huge increase in tips. Tips are pieces of
information that come from the Iraqi people that tell us where IEDs
are, that tell us where individuals are, where terrorists are. These
are the qualified tips. They are accelerating on a daily basis. It has
enabled us to stage offensives throughout Iraq without significantly
diluting our troops in Baghdad. It has enabled the commanders to chase
down al-Qaida and keep them from regrouping and attacking areas that
have been historical sanctuaries of al-Qaida.
September 15 is when General Petraeus will give us a report. Let's
not forget, that is what the law says. We passed a law. We passed a law
either in March or May. The law says September 15 is the date he will
come forth, this great general, General Petraeus, who is over there
right now. It will give him time to say what our situation is and what
we should do if a change is necessary. We owe it to him at this time.
A total surge, of course, has just been in place for 2 weeks. We have
some good indicators that the time to make that kind of change is
September. We cannot change the terms of the deal now. That was the
deal, and that is written into law.
My colleague Senator DeMint stated it well:

If we're going to govern effectively, we can't change our
minds every week.

Let's not give a knee-jerk reaction to the headlines of IEDs and
sectarian killings. This is exactly what the enemy is aiming its
propaganda toward. I recognize this is not the fight we thought we were
going to be getting

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into, but it is the fight that is before us now.
I admire Prime Minister Maliki's assessment. I quote him again:

A fundamental struggle is being fought on Iraqi soil
between those who believe that Iraqis, after a long
nightmare, can retrieve their dignity and freedom, and others
who think that oppression is the order of things and that
Iraqis are doomed to a political culture of terror, prisons
and mass graves.

I want to share one last point. Before I do, I want to put up a
chart. If my colleagues will remember, we had the Webb amendment which
would have dictated terms of how we do our troops deployments. At that
time, I used this chart. We have to keep in mind that one of the
problems we had in orchestrating a surge and trying to address this now
is that we went through a pretty tough climb back in the 1990s.
As this chart shows, if we look at the black line, this is the 1993
baseline increase by inflation. In other words, if we did just what we
took in 1993 and only increased it by inflation, this is where we would
be in the year 2000. The Clinton administration is represented by this
red line. If we take the difference between the status quo and what his
recommendation was in his budget, it is $412 billion total. We, in our
wisdom, saw we were able to raise it to this green line in the middle.
But it still is $313 billion less.
I suggest that a lot of that represents our troop levels because the
most expensive thing we have in defense is the troop levels. We are in
the situation now where we have to see if this is going to work, if it
changes, the surge, General Petraeus and all his efforts are taking
place.
I mentioned the President's speech of January 10. I did it for a
reason because I went back and reread that speech. If you read it, it
talks about the victory being in a bottoms-up situation. In other
words, instead of the top down, from the top political leaders down, it
is going to be from the roots, from the people in these various
communities. That is exactly what I witnessed.
Mr. President, I will share with you what I witnessed the last time I
was there. Keep in mind that just a few weeks ago, long before the full
surge effect was taking place, I spent a lot of time in Anbar Province
in Ramadi, Fallujah, as well as in Baghdad. I saw some changes. I think
a lot of it was due to the fact that we have had a lot of the cut-and-
run or surrender resolutions and the Iraqi people are very much
concerned that is what we are going to do, and that all of a sudden got
their attention.
What I will share with you, Mr. President, I know we spend a lot of
time and it is important we talk about the political leaders. Al-
Maliki, we do talk about him. He is the Prime Minister. We talk about
Prime Minister Jasim and Dr. Rubaie. What I noticed last time is a
bottoms-up dramatic improvement, not coming from the political leaders
but the religious leaders. This is what I witnessed.
My colleagues might remember, we stood on the Senate floor a year ago
and said the terrorists are saying Ramadi will become the terrorist
capital of the world. Now Ramadi is secure. If you go next door to
Fallujah--and we remember the World War II type of door-to-door
activities that were taking place there. The marines did a miraculous
job, but Fallujah at the time I got over there on this last trip was
secure. The important thing is it was secured by the Iraqi security
forces. They were the ones providing security at that time.
I mentioned a minute ago the joint security stations. This is a
bottoms-up type of thing. I noticed in Baghdad, where, instead of our
troops going out into the field and coming back to the Green Zone at
night, they stayed out there. They bed down in the homes with the Iraqi
forces. I talked with people who experienced this, theirs and ours. I
didn't see that in any of the previous trips over there.
If I can single out one thing that is causing the bottoms-up
improvement we have seen so far as a result of this surge announcement
that was made just a few months ago, it would be the attitude of the
clerics and the imams in the mosques. We monitor these, by the way. Our
intelligence is at all these mosque meetings where they meet once a
week. As most of us do on Sunday in our churches, mosques meet at
different times. Nonetheless, they have weekly services. In weekly
services prior to January of this year, 85 percent of the messages that
were given in the mosques by the clerics were anti-American messages.
They started reducing, and by April we went through the entire month
without one mosque giving an anti-American message. That is why we are
getting the support of the people, the bottoms-up we are talking about
and the President was talking about back on January 10. We are seeing
these individuals doing the same thing.
I don't think there is a person watching us or present in this
Chamber today who isn't from a State that has such programs as the
Neighborhood Watch Programs. That is what they have over there right
now, and they are watching and they are going around with spray cans
and spraying circles around undetonated IEDs so that our troops don't
get into them. This is the type of cooperation we have not seen before.
This is what the President asked for on January 10. I think anything
prior to our legal timeline of September 15 and getting an ultimate
report from General Petraeus would be a great disservice to our
fighters over there as well as to Iraqis.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I thank the senior Senator from Rhode
Island for allowing me to go ahead of him to deliver some remarks on
the general Department of Defense authorization bill. Senator Reed has
not only been a strong supporter of our military, but he has an
understanding that is unique for somebody who is a West Point graduate.
As we move forward with this debate on Iraq, his understanding of Iraq
is second to none, given the fact that he has been with this issue from
the beginning. He has made 10 trips into Iraq to understand the
situation on the ground. We very much look forward to his continuing
leadership and contribution to the debate.
Today, I rise because I want to praise the work of Chairman Levin,
Senator Warner, Senator McCain, Senator Reed, Senator Nelson, and the
members of the Armed Services Committee for developing a very good,
excellent product for us to consider in the Department of Defense
authorization bill.
As the Senate debates this week on the keystone issue of our time
with respect to U.S. involvement in Iraq, we must not lose sight of the
importance of maintaining a strong national defense. That strong
national defense is what is at the heart of the 2008 Department of
Defense Authorization Act.
The bill is a strong statement of support for our men and women in
uniform. It gives our military the tools it needs to confront an
increasingly complex and dynamic set of threats that we face around the
world. It is a bill that will help assure our military remains the best
equipped, the best trained, and the best led fighting force in the
world. Today, our men and women in uniform are serving honorably around
the world. In the mountains of Afghanistan, they are tracking and
killing al-Qaida and resurgent Taliban operatives who are resisting the
move toward democracy. In Iraq, they are confronting the monumental
task of stabilizing and rebuilding a country that is caught in the
middle of sectarian violence and a spiraling, what many of us have
concluded is an intractable civil war. In the horn of Africa, in the
Balkans, and elsewhere, they are looking to bring peace, hope, and
security to those war-torn areas of the world.
I am immensely proud of the work of our troops both abroad and at
home, for our National Guard, Reserve, and Active-Duty troops protect
our homeland and help us respond to the threats of hurricanes, fires,
and floods. I know all my colleagues share the appreciation I have for
the work of our military, and I know this shared appreciation gives us
much common ground from which to work. We all agree that our military
must remain the strongest and best equipped in the world, that our
Nation's defense is the Federal Government's top priority, and that our
military families and our veterans deserve the best our Nation can
provide. Because we agree on these principles, this bill rests on a
solid, bipartisan foundation, and it is a bill we

[[Page S9254]]

must pass in Congress and let it be signed by the President.
Unfortunately, in the press you won't hear much about many of the
provisions that are in this bill, and we won't hear much about where we
do see eye to eye and what we have a consensus on with respect to the
DOD bill. You probably won't hear much about how we agree we need to
expand our military, that our troops need to have more MRAPs, Strykers,
and other equipment in the field immediately; that more resources are
needed to protect our troops from IEDs; that our assets in space are
too vulnerable to disruption or attack; that we need to continue to
bolster our military warning and defense system, and so on. We won't
hear much of that in the debate here in the week ahead.

But the fact is this bill comes to us at a critical time in our
Nation and it is one of the largest steps this body has ever taken
toward strengthening our defense, refurbishing our military--which is
under so much strain in these times--and making good on our promises to
care for our military families and our veterans.
I want to briefly illustrate the impact this bill will have by
briefly describing how it will help our troops and their families in my
State of Colorado. We in Colorado are proud to be the home of some of
the crown jewels of our Nation's defense and homeland security. Fort
Carson, Peterson Air Force Base, Buckley Air Force Base, Schriever Air
Force Base, Cheyenne Mountain Air Station, and the Air Force Academy
are all in my home State of Colorado, as are the headquarters for Air
Force Space Command and Northern Command.
I have spent a lot of time at those bases meeting with our military
leaders, and the commanders there are clear about their needs and their
priorities. I am pleased to report to them that the Armed Services
Committee, in the bill now being considered by this Chamber, has
transferred many of their priorities into the bill and will make them a
reality if we can get this bill signed by the President of the United
States. Those priorities include: military construction, equipment,
weapon systems, and health care--those things that are important to
make our military strong.
The military construction authorization in this bill will help us
keep on track with BRAC realignments and needed infrastructure
improvements. At Fort Carson in Colorado we are in the midst of a very
significant BRAC-directed expansion that will almost double the size of
the Mountain Post. Two additional brigades are coming to Colorado
Springs, and we are doing all we can as a community to welcome these
soldiers and their families to Colorado.
The bill includes $470 million in authorization for military
construction at Fort Carson, some of which will go to the construction
of a new headquarters for the 4th Infantry Division and a new brigade
complex for the 1st Brigade, and new barracks for our soldiers.
For the Colorado National Guard at Buckley Air Force Base in Denver,
CO, we have added an authorization for $7.3 million for a squadron
operations facility to replace an outdated structure that houses the F-
16s of the 140th Air Wing of the Colorado National Guard.
On the equipment side, this bill responds to the rapidly growing
needs of the services to refurbish, replace, and modernize equipment
that is being worn out in Iraq and Afghanistan. Recognizing that the
President's request for equipment for our troops was not sufficient,
this bill expands the authority for war-related procurement by over $12
billion. I am particularly encouraged with the bill's inclusion of $4.1
billion to fulfill the military services' unfunded requirements for
MRAP vehicles, whose V-shaped hulls are proving invaluable in reducing
casualties from IEDs. This builds on an effort Senator Biden led in
March to include $1.5 billion in the emergency supplemental. Fort
Carson soldiers told me how invaluable these MRAPs are, and this
funding will see to it that we get more of those vehicles into the
field as quickly as possible.
Mr. President, I see the majority leader on the floor, and I would be
happy to yield to him, if he so chooses.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, if the distinguished leader will yield for
a minute, I want to thank our colleague. I listened to his presentation
and thank him for his reflections about the committee's work under the
leadership of Senator Levin and Senator McCain on the underlying bill.
Eventually, I presume, we will focus more attention on that, but it is
important to the Senator's State.
The State of Colorado is one of the rocks in our overall defense
system of this country, and I wish more people knew how important
Colorado's citizens are in giving their support to our men and women of
the Armed Forces who proudly serve us from that State. I thank the
Senator for his contribution.
Mr. SALAZAR. I thank my friend from Virginia.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, before my friend from Virginia leaves, I
note that 40 percent of the State of Nevada is restricted military
airspace--40 percent of it. It is all controlled by the military.
Mr. WARNER. Amazing.
Mr. REID. We have Nellis Air Force Base which, as you know, is such a
great facility for training our fighter pilots. That is for the Air
Force. In the northern part of the State, as you know, we have the
Naval Air Training Center, which is for the Navy. If you want to be a
Navy pilot, you have to go to Fallon to get your Ph.D. The same as if
you are an Air Force pilot, you have to go to Nellis to get your
training. It takes so much of Nevada's land to fly over to become the
Ph.Ds in fighter training.
Mr. WARNER. The citizens of your State have given 100 percent support
to these military people all these years. They may miss a little bit of
that airspace, but they are proud to have them there.

Mr. REID. I wanted to brag about Nevada a little bit.
You know, the interesting thing, I say to my friend from Virginia,
Nellis Air Force Base--when it was started during the Second World War,
it was known as the Las Vegas Gunnery School, and then it became Nellis
Air Force Base--named after someone from Searchlight, NV, by the way,
Bill Nellis--was on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Now it is in the middle
of Las Vegas. But the people of Las Vegas support that base. They
protect that base. Nobody criticizes an airplane being a little too
loud. We love Nellis Air Force Base.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, Nellis Air Force Base is well cared for in
the current authorization bill before this body.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Durbin
amendment No. 2252 be withdrawn; that the McConnell amendment No. 2241
be agreed to; and that the Cornyn amendment No. 2100 be agreed to; and
that the motions to reconsider be laid on the table.
Before there is acceptance or rejection, let me say this, Mr.
President. We have read the Cornyn amendment. We believe it should have
a 50-vote margin, like all other amendments, but we are even willing to
go a step further with this amendment. We will just accept it, and that
is what the consent is all about. We accept the Cornyn amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, we, under
our leadership of Senator McConnell, have a request for a rollcall vote
on the Cornyn language. We would object to a unanimous consent request
to agree to the amendment because there is a desire, a strong desire,
to have a recorded vote on this important issue; that every Senator
express his or her desire on this amendment.
Having said that, we also want to check with the sponsor of the
amendment to see if he wanted to make further comments prior to a vote.
Again, we are confident we would be prepared to set that vote for a
reasonable time tomorrow after we consult with the proponent.
Therefore, I object to the request, and I propose we revisit this in
the morning to see if we can find a time certain for a vote on the
Cornyn language.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, we would be happy to revisit this in the
morning. We agreed to a reasonable time agreement on this and to have
an up-or-down vote. We are in favor of that, a recorded vote. We will
take a recorded vote or we will take a voice vote--

[[Page S9255]]

whatever the sponsor of the legislation and the Republican leadership
wants.
I say, however, that there is an effort to delay this matter. It
appears very clear that the purpose of the Republican minority is to
obstruct what we are trying to do, and that is complete work on this
Defense authorization bill, including an up-or-down vote on Levin-Reed.
But I appreciate the opportunity to revisit this in the morning, and I
look forward to that.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection has been heard.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished leader for his
understanding and the representation that we can resolve this issue
tomorrow, and I know our leader is anxious to hopefully get through the
various procedural matters relating to the underlying authorization
bill so that can move forward.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I have about 5 more minutes to complete
my presentation, and then I know Senator Jack Reed has probably about
20 minutes as well to speak on the issue.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, may I be heard briefly. I so apologize to my
friend from Colorado for interrupting his speech. He was gracious. I
didn't hear him yielding the floor to recognize me. I thought he was
finished. I apologize. This is very typical of the Senator from
Colorado to think of others before he thinks of himself. I apologize
for not recognizing his courtesy.
Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for his
statement. Frankly, it was not great interruption. He had major
procedural business to bring before the floor of the Senate and I very
much understand.
The budget authority for the Air Force is equally robust, putting
additional money behind some of our key space and missile defense
programs. Many of our communications, intelligence, and missile
detection satellites--a large number of which are flown by the 50th
Space Wing out of Buckley--are reaching the end of their lifespan.
Every day, though, they grow more and more central to troops on the
ground.
The bill provides important investments in our space assets,
including $126.7 million for the Space-Based Infrared Satellite System
to replace outdated missile detection satellites, and another $300
million to improve our space situational awareness, to help address
concerns raised as a result of the Chinese antisatellite test earlier
this year. Ask the space professionals, as I have at Schriever,
Buckley, or Peterson Air Force Base, and they will tell you how much
these investments are needed.
Beyond the funding for equipment and facilities in the bill, however,
there are several key quality-of-life provisions in this legislation
that the Armed Services Committee has brought before us. Supporting our
troops, after all, means we support them in the field and we support
them at home. We should help them be successful not just as soldiers
but as mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, husbands, and wives. Part of
our support includes passing the Dignified Treatment for Wounded
Warriors Act, which we passed last week. The bill requires the
Secretaries of Defense and Veterans Affairs to create a comprehensive
policy for servicemembers who are transitioning from the DOD health
system to the VA system. As evidenced by Walter Reed, the current
system is not up to the standards that any of us would want for our men
and women who have served our country so proudly.
I am also pleased that the underlying bill includes a 3\1/2\ percent
pay raise for our military personnel, it rejects the administration's
proposal to raise TRICARE fees, and requires the DOD to develop a plan
to address the findings of an internal assessment of the well-being of
soldiers and marines in Iraq. These steps are all important for the
quality of life and health of the servicemembers of our Armed Forces.
Mr. President, I again thank Chairman Levin, Ranking Member McCain,
Senator Reid, Senator Nelson, and others who have been involved in
taking such a large step forward for our Nation's defenses, and which
provides so much common ground from which we can work. It is a solid
bill. It is a solid bill which I hope will be further strengthened by
the time it passes this Chamber.
I want to very briefly speak about four amendments that I have filed.
First, I have filed an amendment with Senator Alexander to implement
the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, and I look forward to the
debate on that amendment in more detail later this week. We need to
find common ground on how we move forward with the United States policy
in Iraq.
Second, Senator McConnell, Senator Allard, Senator Bunning, and I
have filed an amendment, amendment No. 2061, to set 2017 as a hard
deadline for chemical weapons destruction and to increase funding for
the weapons destruction programs at Pueblo, CO, and in Bluegrass, KY.
Our amendment adds $44 million for MilCon, military construction,
funding at these sites.
Third, amendment No. 2110; that will help the Department of Defense
protect military installations against encroaching development. My
amendment builds on recently released DOD and RAND Corporation reports
and pushes the Department to allocate additional resources, provide
additional staff, and more aggressively implement the authorities
Congress provided to confront the encroachment challenges at many of
our bases. Fort Carson, in my State of Colorado, is a prime example of
how an effective DOD encroachment program can make sure the military
training at the facility is not compromised by development. At other
places and other bases in my State--Buckley Air Force Base, Schriever,
and Peterson--the Air Force and we in the Congress have a lot more to
do to make sure we don't compromise the military training mission of
those facilities.
Finally, Senator Sessions and I have filed an amendment to provide
better support for the Paralympic programs that serve our
servicemembers and veterans. My amendment will allow the Office of
Special Events at the Department of Defense to provide transportation,
logistical support or funding for the Paralympic Military Program and
for certain national and international Paralympic competitions. The
Paralympic program is invaluable to wounded warriors who are recovering
from injuries, and DOD should be allowed to assist with the program
when it benefits our servicemembers and veterans.
Again, I thank the leadership of the Armed Services Committee and all
its members for bringing forward a bill that is truly a very solid,
excellent bill.
I thank my colleague, Senator Reed, for his indulgence in letting me
precede him.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, might I ask the distinguished assistant
Democratic leader, I believe that business for today is concluded with
respect to consents from the other side. Am I not correct on that? We
will have the benefit of the remarks of the distinguished Senator Reed,
and then he will wrap up, including two resolutions which we have on
this side; am I correct in that?
Mr. DURBIN. I would say to the Senator from Virginia, I am not aware
of any other business to come before the Senate.
Mr. WARNER. Is that the understanding?
Mr. REED. That is my understanding. I have no knowledge of any.
Mr. WARNER. I am told by the floor staff there will be no request for
consents tonight.
Mr. DURBIN. That is correct.
Mr. WARNER. I appreciate the assurances of the assistant leader.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, today we are facing a critical juncture
regarding our operations in Iraq. We can continue with a policy that is
straining our military, putting excruciating strain on our military and
their families, which is diminishing our standing in the international
community and which is rapidly losing the support of the American
public--in sum, a policy that cannot be sustained--or we can change, we
can make a transition of this mission to focus on objectives that are
feasible, to begin a reduction in our forces which will relieve the
stress on our military and their families, to initiate complementary
and comprehensive diplomatic, political, and economic efforts to engage
Iraq's neighbors and the rest of the world in bringing a degree of
stability to that country.

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I believe it is time for such a change. That is why I have joined
many of my colleagues, particularly Senator Levin, to propose an
amendment to do that. This amendment would first call for a beginning
of a reduction of American military forces 120 days after the passage
of the legislation. It would give the President the flexibility to pick
the precise moment and the precise number of forces and to develop a
timetable for their departure. Then it would call for the transition to
specific missions by next spring, and those missions would include
counterterrorism operations, since we can never give up in our attempts
to preemptively attack and destroy terrorist cells--not just in Iraq
but in, unfortunately, many other parts of the world.
Second, it would allow the American forces to continue to train Iraqi
security forces.
Third, it would clearly state we will protect our forces wherever
they are, particularly in Iraq.
It also talks about a very comprehensive diplomatic effort. One of
the dramatic failings of this administration has been a one-dimensional
policy--military force alone, in most cases unilateral military force.
That one-dimensional policy defies strategy, it defies the operational
techniques of counterinsurgency, and effectively, I think, has led us,
in large part, to Iraq today where we are in a very difficult
situation.
As all of our commanders have said persistently over the course of
this entire conflict: Military operations alone will not lead to
success. They will buy time, they might provide some political space,
but they will not lead to success. They are merely a complement and a
prelude to the economic, to the political, to the nonmilitary forces
that are essential to prevail in a counterinsurgency, stabilize a
country, and to ultimately prevail in the type of operation we are
witnessing in Iraq.
I believe the President had an opportunity last January to chart a
new course. The American people spoke very clearly in the November
elections. They wanted change. The Iraqi Study Group, a combination of
some of the most gifted minds on both sides of the aisle with respect
to foreign policy, gave a framework that talked about and hoped for a
redeployment of American forces and significant engagement in
diplomatic activities. All of this was at the hands of the President.
He essentially said, no, we are going to do a lot more of the same--or
a little more of the same. I think at that point, frankly, the American
people understood the President wasn't listening or, if he was, it was
not getting through.
As a result, I think they began to become very much disenchanted with
the course of action of this administration. I don't have to tell
anyone in this Chamber or across the globe that this is a decisive
turning point in their demands that we act, that this Senate and the
House of Representatives take significant action. We are trying to
respond to that legitimate concern of the American people by the Levin-
Reed amendment that we have proposed.
The President said the goals for the surge were to support Iraqi
efforts to quell sectarian violence, ensure territorial integrity and
counter Iranian and Syrian activity, encourage strong democratic
institutions, and foster the conditions for Iraqi national
reconciliation.
The heart of it, as he suggested and others have, was to give the
Iraqi leaders the ability to make tough political decisions which were
essential to their future and to our continued engagement in Iraq.
Principally among them was to jump start the reconciliation process,
bring the Sunni community into government and the civic life of Iraq,
to pass legislation to fairly distribute the proceeds of oil revenue,
the major source of revenue in that country, and to take other steps--
including provincial elections. None of that has been effectively
accomplished.
So if the premise of the surge was to create tactical momentum for
political progress, some tactical momentum may be there but very
little, if any, political progress. That, I believe, is the reality.
These goals, this effort was difficult for an extra 30,000 troops to
accomplish. But it was made much more difficult because of a series of
fundamental operational mistakes and strategic flaws that this
administration has been engaged in since the beginning of their
operations in Iraq. We know that soon after we arrived in Baghdad,
after a very successful conventional attack, there were insufficient
forces to occupy the country and chaos broke out. The Coalition
Provisional Authority, the CPA, embarked on a debaathification program
that denied employment and livelihood and, in a sense, hope to
thousands of individuals--teachers, bureaucrats--who had been part of
the prior regime, mostly because it was the only way they could hold
their jobs, and left, particularly the Sunni community, in a situation
where they questioned whether there was a place for them in the new,
emerging government.

The CPA disestablished the Army; 500,000 individuals with training
suddenly found themselves without a future and very quickly many of
them found themselves in the insurgency, for many reasons. The
Government, the administration, failed to garner support from regional
powers to help.
Then the administration embarked on a series of elections. These
elections demonstrated the procedure of democracy. But what they failed
to grasp, the administration particularly, is that elections alone are
insufficient unless there is a governmental capacity to translate those
elections into an effective government that serves the needs of its
citizens. So we have demonstrations of thousands of Iraqis, hundreds of
thousands, millions going to the polls. But what happened is they
didn't elect a functioning government. They became even more frustrated
when they recognized that the Government in Baghdad today doesn't work
for them.
All of this was summed up, I think very accurately, by former
Secretary of Defense William Perry, on January 25, before the Armed
Services Committee, where he stated:

We may never know whether our goal of achieving a
democratic stable government in Iraq was in fact feasible,
since the administration's attempts to do so were so burdened
with strategic errors.

So we start now in a real strategic deficit. Unfortunately, I think
the President continues in that vein. The President announced the surge
in January: 30,000, roughly, additional forces. It took them many
months finally to get in place. The administration claims that since
June 15 they have been in place. This was not a surge in the classic
military sense of overwhelming force applied rapidly. It was a slow,
gradual escalation of a limited force because our force structure
limits what we could do. From the very beginning, the ability of this
force, deployed in a slow manner, to decisively influence the action on
the ground was highly questionable.
I had the opportunity a few days ago to go to Iraq. Many of my
colleagues have gone. I was able to travel not only into Baghdad but to
get into the countryside to visit forward-operating bases, patrol
bases, company-sized bases that are the new disposition of our forces.
First, let me say, as always, I was impressed with the extraordinary
professionalism and commitment of the soldiers and marines, the sailors
and the airmen who serve us so well. They are doing a superb job. But
my conclusion, after spending these 2 brief days in the field, was
their tactical momentum, changing the nature of the battlefield, has
not, as I said, translated into the political progress needed to truly
bring security and stability to Iraq.
And then something else too, the nonrebuttable fact that I see
constantly; that is, this surge will come to an end later next spring,
not because we have succeeded, not because we have achieved our
objectives, but simply because we cannot continue to deploy 160,000
troops in that country. That is a function of our limited forces.
Unless the President is prepared to adopt Draconian personnel policies,
not 14- to 15-month tours but 18- to 20-month tours; unless he wants to
continue to rely upon significant stop-loss, where individuals who are
able to leave the service are prevented from doing so; unless he is
prepared to do those things, then by next spring the surge ends.
So I think it is appropriate, if we are seeing a situation where just
months from now we are going to lower our forces, that we should start
thinking

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right now of how we do it in a way which will enhance the security of
the United States, which will represent to the American people a new
direction which they are clamoring for, and which can be sustained, not
only in terms of material and personnel but in terms of the support of
the American people.
In my opportunity to visit Iraq, I had a chance to sit down with
General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. They have suggested that they
consciously recognize the limitations of our overall infrastructure.
They also indicated that they were ready, probably sooner than
September, to make a declaration of their advice to the President. I do
not think we should wait, either. I think this debate is timely, the
legislation is timely, and we should move forward.
Now, we received additional information just a few days ago in the
nature of the interim report with respect to the status of the
benchmarks. There is an appearance that the military situation in terms
of the reliability of Iraqi Army units is encouraging to a degree. But
there is still a great deal of work to do with the police force, which
is a major component of any type of stable society.
In addition, I think if you drill down below the superficial, there
is still the nagging question of the reliability, the political
reliability, the professional reliability, of these forces,
particularly their leadership. That is something which I think is still
in great doubt.
But if you look at most of the political area, there is a string of
unsatisfactory grades. The President's report found unsatisfactory
progress of enacting and implementing legislation on debaathification
reform. Essentially, what we are seeing is a huge conflict between the
Sunni and Shia communities, and this conflict is not being abated by
the wise action of the Government, a Shia government, to allow Sunnis
fuller participation in the civic life and the political life of Iraq.
We are seeing unsatisfactory progress on enacting and implementing
major legislation to ensure equitable hydrocarbon resources,
distribution of oil and petroleum proceeds. We are seeing
unsatisfactory progress on establishing a provincial election law,
establishing provincial council authority, and setting a date for
provincial elections.
One of the problems that has been nagging in the election process for
the last several years in Iraq is that the Sunni community did not
participate in significant elections, and therefore they are not
adequately represented in certain areas. So, as a result, they haven't
got this sense of participation of ownership that is so necessary.
Until we have provincial elections, this will continue and further
provide excuses, if not real reasons, for Sunnis not to participate
fully and not to cooperate fully with the Government and with our
forces in the field.
The report also talked about unsatisfactory progress toward providing
Iraqi commanders with all authorities to make tactical and operational
decisions in consultation with U.S. commanders without political
intervention, to include the authority to pursue all extremists,
including Sunni insurgents and Shia militias. Here is that very-
difficult-to-measure factor about the subjective quality of these
commanders and leaders--whether they can operate without political
interference or whether they are wittingly or unwittingly extensions of
the political party.
Just today, if you saw the New York Times, there was an interesting
article about how our American forces in Anbar Province were making
progress with Sunni tribes, previously our enemies, our opponents, who
now were rallying, not necessarily because they agree with us but
because they recognize how ruthless and how much al-Qaida is targeting
them in going after them. Now, that is progress we should recognize.
But what is disconcerting is the report that the regular Iraqi
brigade in that region, primarily Shia, is actually trying to
interfere, even in some cases suggest an attack on those Sunnis
tribespeople because they see this as a force that will threaten them
as they go forward--another example of this Sunni-Shia divide, which is
a very difficult political chasm to try to bridge in a short period of
time, and that is what we face today in many parts of Iraq.
We also saw unsatisfactory progress in ensuring the Iraqi security
forces are providing evenhanded enforcement of the law and
unsatisfactory progress as far as limiting militia control of local
security. It is a very difficult situation in many respects.
Now, military operations--our military operations are critically
important, but here is another reality that I think escapes so many
people. Ultimately, only the Iraqis can provide a solution to these
political problems, to these sectarian divides. We can suggest what
they should do, but unless they do it, these divides will continue to
paralyze this country and continue to undermine our efforts to help
them stabilize their own country.
I don't think, given the fundamental nature of those issues, that the
next 6 weeks until September 15 will make a profound difference. It has
been suggested by many commentators that the ability of the Iraqi
Government to function--even participate over the next several weeks is
limited. So for those people, my colleagues, who call: Wait for
September 15, I don't believe or hope that they are suggesting that
those profound political problems will be somehow miraculously cured in
the next 6 weeks.

As I said before, the inescapable fact, to me, is that by next April,
we won't be able to generate 160,000, that somehow our military, sooner
rather than later, will have to declare that there is a new strategy
that rests not on the surge but on a much smaller force or at least a
smaller force, and that force has to deal with these problems or has to
deal in a way which the American people will support their continued
presence in Iraq. That signal is today for a change in policy, not in
September, not next spring, but today.
Now, I alluded to the lack of public support. Some would suggest,
well, that is not important. You know, tough leaders have been in
situations where the public did not support them. Well, the reality
that I learned a long time ago, serving in the military, going to West
Point, is that public support is a critical and necessary element of
any national security strategy; you can only go so far and so long
without it.
We are reaching a point where the American public is clearly
declaring that they are deeply concerned about what is going on, deeply
distrustful of the President's policy, and my fear, frankly, is unless
we take prudent action today, unless the President takes prudent
action, that their tolerance for any significant engagement might erode
completely by next spring, leaving us with fewer options then than we
have today.
A July 6 through 8 Gallup poll found 62 percent of Americans felt the
United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq. A July 11,
2007, Newsweek poll found that 68 percent of Americans disapproved of
the way President Bush was handling the situation in Iraq. This is
significant because I suggest it undercuts the necessary ingredient of
public support for any major military strategic policy. As the
President continues to be intransigent and as many of our colleagues
give him the luxury of that intransigence, I fear that the American
public becomes increasingly disheartened, increasingly desperate, and
increasingly unwilling to listen to policies that will provide for a
phased and orderly transition of our mission in Iraq.
We also understand the huge cost of this war. We have appropriated
$450 billion. As many of my colleagues point out, the Congressional
Budget Office estimates that we are spending about $10 billion a month.
That, too, is very difficult to sustain because most of this is being
financed, if not all of it, through deficit spending, which means we
are passing on to the next generation of Americans a huge bill.
But, also, these are real opportunity costs. How are we going to
reestablish, in a very narrow vein, our military, in terms of the
personnel, their equipment, when the effort is essentially completed
one way or the other? How are we going to provide for the next
generation of military equipment, the next generation of military
tactics and techniques and support personnel if our budget is in such
disarray as it is now? I am not even beginning to comment on the huge
costs that are unmet in this society in terms of health care, in terms
of education, in terms of those forces and those ingredients of
national

[[Page S9258]]

power, broad national power that are so essential.
As I said earlier, these operations are posing an excruciating stress
and strain on military forces. The high operational tempo is really
taking its toll on the troops and on their families. Since 2002, 1.4
million troops have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Nearly every
nondeployed combat brigade in the Active-Duty Army has reported that
they are not ready to complete their assigned war mission. These are
the troops who have come back from Iraq, from Afghanistan. They are not
ready to perform their mission.
We all can remember--I can, at least--Governor Bush talking up before
a large crowd in his election campaign and criticizing the Clinton
administration because two divisions, as he said, were not--if they
were asked to report, they would say: Not ready for duty, sir, to the
President. That pales in comparison to the lack of readiness we see
today in our military forces. Nearly 9 out of every 10 Army National
Guard forces that are not in Iraq or Afghanistan have less than half of
the equipment needed to do their job. Their job now is to provide
support for Governors in disasters, in problems that are related to
their home States.
As I said again and again, military planners do not see how we can
sustain 160,000 troops beyond next April. We also recognize that our
policies of go-it-alone, our policies of virtually unilateral action
are increasingly alienating opinion throughout the world. Once again,
to accomplish anything significant, to rally diplomatic forces, to
rally all of the forces throughout the world to help us achieve our
end, you have to start on the basis of at least understanding and
support. We have seen that deteriorate.
We have seen also the situation where, because of our concentration
in Iraq, al-Qaida now is resurgent. That is the conclusion of the
National Intelligence Estimate that was talked about in the press just
last week. We are seeing a situation where Iran is increasing its
strategic power. One major factor is the fact that we are tied down
with 160,000 troops in Iraq. We are tied down in a way in which many of
the individuals in the Iraqi Government whom we depend upon to do and
take the actions where it is essential to our success have close
personal and political ties to the Iranians. They talk to them on a
weekly basis. They take certain directions from them. We are in a
situation where our position in Iraq--unwittingly, perhaps--has
strengthened the Iranians. We cannot effectively talk about another
major military operation when we are having a very difficult time
supplying and supporting this operation.
We have effectively taken out two of their traditional opponents in
the region, and most difficult and dangerous opponent, the Taliban
regime in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. They now have
strategic space. They are using it. They are using it to encourage
Hezbollah and Hamas. They are using it to try to achieve nuclear fuel
cycles and, on many days we all feel, perhaps, even a nuclear weapon.
So what we have seen also is that as these developments take place, the
world's opinion is rapidly turning against us.
We are seeing disturbing events in Pakistan and elsewhere where there
is a concentration of al-Qaida leadership. I, like so many of my
colleagues, was most disturbed a few weeks ago when American news
broadcasters were showing films of a graduation ceremony of hundreds of
individuals somewhere in Pakistan who were leaving to go off and pursue
their jihadist terrorist activities around the world. That is a
frightening but real situation.
As a result, Senator Levin and I have worked with our colleagues and
have proposed an amendment that responds to these different issues and
different threats and also the reality of the situation at home and in
Iraq. I am pleased we are supported in our efforts by so many,
including our colleagues, Senators Hagel, Smith, and Senator Snowe.
This is a bipartisan amendment. It recognizes what the American people
are demanding, a change in direction, and what the status on the ground
and the status of the military require also, a change in direction. It
calls for protecting U.S. and coalition forces, continuing our fight
against terrorism, and training Iraqi security forces to step up and
discharge their responsibilities. It calls for a beginning of a phased
reduction of forces, 120 days after enactment of the legislation. It
also calls upon us to begin to take up the issue of real proactive,
complimentary diplomatic, and political action that is so necessary to
stability in the operation.
One of the factors the President talked about last January, and was
alluded to by the Secretary of State and others, was the civilian surge
to match the military surge--a surge in advisers, technicians, those
people who can help the Iraqis organize their political processes at
the city level, the provincial level, and their economic processes.
That is not taking place as rapidly as necessary. We are at a critical
moment, a moment not to delay but to take appropriate action, a moment
to change the direction in Iraq, not simply to wait and wait and wait
until events dictate we have to draw down forces. I hope we can prevail
our colleagues to support our efforts. I will have more to say. I
believe many of my colleagues will have much more to say tomorrow.
I urge passage of the Levin-Reed amendment.

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