[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 141 (Friday, September 21, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11919-S11937]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. 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.

  Pending:


[[Page S11920]]


       Nelson (NE) (for Levin) amendment No. 2011, in the nature 
     of a substitute.
       Warner (for Graham/Kyl) amendment No. 2064 (to amendment 
     No. 2011), to strike section 1023, relating to the granting 
     of civil rights to terror suspects.
       Levin/Reed amendment No. 2898 (to amendment No. 2011), to 
     provide for a reduction and transition of U.S. forces in 
     Iraq.
       Kyl/Lieberman amendment No. 3017 (to amendment No. 2011), 
     to express the sense of the Senate regarding Iran.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the time 
until 9:50 a.m. will be equally divided between the Senator from 
Michigan, Mr. Levin, and the Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain.
  Who yields time?
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. LEVIN. I also ask unanimous consent that the time of the quorum 
be equally divided and that apply retroactively.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Rhode 
Island.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Rhode Island is 
recognized.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, Senator Levin, for 
yielding time and also for being the principal author of the Levin-Reed 
amendment, the amendment we are considering today. There will be a vote 
shortly. The amendment recognizes that we have responsibilities in 
Iraq, but it also recognizes the constraints we face in Iraq.
  The first principal constraint is a lack of sufficient forces to 
maintain the current force level there. That alone must drive a change 
in mission for our military forces in Iraq. But it also recognizes the 
fundamental dynamic in Iraq, which is a political dynamic. It is a 
political dynamic that must be achieved, not by the United States but 
by Iraqi political leaders. When the President announced the surge in 
January, he made it very clear that the whole purpose was to provide 
these leaders with the political space and the climate to make tough 
decisions. Frankly, those decisions have not been made.
  What we have gained on the ground has been tactical momentum. Any 
time you insert the greatest Army and Marine Corps and Air Force and 
Navy in the world into a situation, you are going to make progress--and 
we have. But the real question there is, Will that progress last when 
we inevitably begin to draw our forces down, as General Petraeus has 
announced? I think most people would suggest probably not.
  So we are left with the reality on the ground and the reality here at 
home--waning support for a policy that the American people believe is 
misguided and has been incompetently executed by the administration. We 
have to change the mission, and the core of the Levin-Reed amendment is 
to change that mission, to go away from an open-ended ``we will do 
anything you want, Mr. Maliki, even if you don't do anything we want'' 
to focused counterterrorism, training Iraqi security forces, and 
protecting our forces. It also recognizes that we have to have a 
timeframe in which to do those things.
  I am encouraged and I think all should be encouraged that a year ago 
when we started talking about initiating withdrawal of forces from 
Iraq, that was an item which was not only hotly debated on the floor 
but severely criticized.
  General Petraeus has told us he will propose and will probably 
implement a withdrawal of forces before the end of this year. That is 
part 1 of the Levin-Reed approach. The second is to begin a transition 
to these missions, and we hope that can be accomplished in a very short 
period of time. Finally, we would like to see these missions fully 
vetted, fully set out and implemented on the ground, moving away from 
the open-ended approach within a fixed period of time. This approach, 
together with a very aggressive diplomatic approach, we believe is the 
key to contributing not just to the stability of Iraq but to the long-
term interests of the United States in the region and the world.
  I hope we are able to agree to this amendment, to pick up support. We 
have listened to General Petraeus. Frankly, he has in part agreed with 
us, in terms of beginning withdrawal. He has suggested, but not 
definitively, that some transition sometime down the road must take 
place. But I think--surprisingly to me, at least--when asked what 
should we do in the next year, he essentially said: I can't tell you 
until next March, and then I will tell you. We have to have a plan, a 
strategy for this country that certainly goes beyond next March. The 
world and our strategic interests will not start and stop in March. 
They are continuous, they are challenging, and we have to face the best 
course of action going forward. We believe--I believe strongly--this is 
the best course of action.
  This war in Iraq has cost billions of dollars. More profoundly and 
more fundamentally, it has taken the lives of over 3,700 American 
service men and women. It has injured countless. I think the American 
public is genuinely not only concerned but in a literal sense 
heartbroken about what is going on. They are asking us--indeed, 
demanding of us--if the President is unwilling to act, that we act to 
change the course, to provide a strategy and a policy that is 
consistent with our interests, with our resources, and with our ideals 
that will help us move forward.
  I hope in the next several minutes as this vote comes to the floor 
that the message of the American people will be heard and heeded and 
that we will adopt the Levin-Reed amendment.
  I yield my time.
  Mr. LEVIN. I suggest the absence of a quorum and equally divide the 
time.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I yield myself 4 minutes.
  There is a lot of disagreement about Iraq policy, how we got into the 
quagmire we are in there, the failure to plan properly, the disbanding 
of the Iraqi Army, the lack of a plan for the aftermath and a number of 
other issues which have been the subject of great debate.
  There is a consensus on a number of issues. It is that consensus 
which drives the Levin-Reed amendment. There is a consensus that we 
have an important stake in a stable and independent Iraq. Everyone 
agrees on that. The opponents of this amendment like to suggest that 
somehow or other the proponents are not interested in a stable and 
independent Iraq. It is exactly the opposite. We are as interested in 
that as are the opponents.
  The question is, Are we moving in that direction? Is the current 
policy working or do we need to change course? Do we need to find a way 
to put pressure on the Iraqi leaders to reach political settlement as 
the only hope of achieving an independent and stable Iraq?
  That is not the proponents of this amendment who are saying a 
political settlement is not the only hope of ending the violence and 
achieving stability, that is not just the proponents, that is a 
consensus point. General Petraeus acknowledges that very openly. The 
Iraq Study Group says that. General Jones and his group say that.
  There is no solution that ends the violence that is not based on a 
political coming together of the Iraqi leaders. They have to accept 
responsibility for their own country. They have to meet the benchmarks 
they themselves have set for themselves. They have missed those 
benchmarks and the timelines that were set out by themselves for those 
benchmarks.
  We have to change course because we have been through now longer than 
we fought World War II, we have been there longer than we fought the 
Korean

[[Page S11921]]

war, we have spent half a trillion dollars or more, we have lost almost 
4,000 of our brightest and bravest men and women, seven times that many 
wounded, $10 billion a month.
  We have to change the dynamic in Iraq, and that dynamic can only be 
changed when those Iraqi leaders realize the open-ended commitment is 
over. If we simply say, as the President says: Well, we will take 
another look in March, we will see what direction we are going to go in 
March, whether we are going to reduce our presence below the presurge 
level, but we will do that in March, that is a continuation of the 
message which this administration has been delivering to the Iraqi 
leaders year after year: We are going to be patient. We are going to be 
patient. The President has, a dozen times, said the American people 
need to be patient.
  It is the opposite message that has a chance of working for the Iraqi 
leaders, that we are mighty inpatient here in America, with the 
dawdling of the political leaders in Iraq, who are the only ones who 
can achieve a political settlement. We cannot impose that on them, only 
they can reach it.
  If they keep thinking we are not going to put the pressure on them, 
we are going to be their security blanket, we are going to protect them 
in the Green Zone, we are going to continue to lose our lives and 
squander our resources while they dawdle, they are making the major 
fundamental mistake which is going to keep the violence going.
  We have to correct that. We have to change that. We have to force 
those leaders to accept the responsibility for their own country.
  Now, the Iraq Study Group pointed to the relationship between putting 
pressure on the Iraqi leaders and having them reach an agreement. This 
is what the Iraq Study Group pointed out now almost a year ago: That an 
open-ended commitment of American forces would not provide the Iraqi 
Government the incentive it needs--the incentive it needs--to take the 
political actions that give Iraq the best chance of quelling sectarian 
violence.
  I yield myself 1 additional minute. In the absence of such an 
incentive, the Iraq Study Group said, the Iraqi Government might 
continue to delay taking those actions.
  That is the connection this amendment makes. What Levin-Reed says is: 
We are not going to withdraw precipitously, we are not going to totally 
withdraw, we have interests there that require us to keep some troops 
there. But we have the need to change that mission.
  The President talks about the possibility, but he does not do it now. 
He does not say: we are announcing we are going to change our mission 
to a support mission, out of the middle of a civil war. We are going to 
change our mission to supporting our own people. We are going to change 
our mission to going after terrorists, a targeted counterterrorism 
mission, we are going to change our mission so that we are going to, 
yes, continue to support the Iraqi Army, to supply the Iraqi Army, but 
we are getting out of the middle of a sectarian battle for our sake and 
for the sake of the Iraqi people, to force those leaders to take 
responsibility for their own nation.
  So it is not precipitous. We provide a reasonable timeline. We say 
the troops that need to be withdrawn as part of that transition to 
those new missions will be withdrawn within 9 months.
  Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, how much time is remaining on our side?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Twelve minutes.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to Senator Inhofe from 
Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I think we need to be real clear what we 
are talking about. What we are talking about is telling the enemy what 
we are going to do. If there is one thing they have said, our military 
has said we cannot do, is to leave precipitously and let them know when 
we are going to do it. But that is what we are talking about.
  You know, when General Petraeus came a couple of weeks ago, I knew 
exactly what he was going to say because I was over there--I have been 
over there actually 15 times in the AOR of Iraq, not always in Iraq, 
sometimes Afghanistan, Djibouti and all of that.
  But I have watched very carefully, from time to time when I have been 
there, what progress has been made. I was in shock the last two trips 
we took. The last two trips, it was so evident in that one area, 
starting with Anbar, where most of the problems were. And I was in 
Anbar Province, in Fallujah, during all the elections that took place, 
and it was chaos up there. We remember our marines going door to door 
World War II style and all the things that were going on there. It is 
now totally secure. It is not secure under us, it is secure under the 
Iraqi security forces.
  We remember only a year ago the terrorists said Ramadi was going to 
be the terrorist capital of world. It is now secure. All of the way 
through down there, south of Baghdad, the same thing is happening.
  What has happened with this surge are three different things: No. 1, 
the surge itself. That is more people. No. 2, we had General Petraeus 
going in. No. 3, they did get the message from some of these surrender 
and cut-and-run resolutions that there was the threat that we would 
pull out, and, consequently, the Iraqi security forces have done things 
they have never done before.
  I learned something when I was over there, and that was it is not the 
political leaders, it is the religious leaders who are calling the 
shots. Our intelligence goes to all the weekly mosque meetings. Prior 
to the surge, 85 percent of the mosque meetings were anti-American 
messages. Since the surge, since April, there hasn't been one.
  So this is the kind of progress that is being made. We now have 
volunteers going out there with spray cans, putting circles around the 
undetonated IEDs, doing this on their own, risking their own lives to 
help Americans.
  We have this imbedded program, where they actually go in joint 
security stations and live with the Iraqis. It is something that has 
been very successful in developing close relationships. So this is the 
kind of success we are having.
  I was up in Tikrit the other day. Remember, that is Saddam Hussein's 
hometown. Even up there, in that home territory up there, with the 
exception of Diyala, it all looks real good. That is the bottom line. 
We have success.
  If we pass something now that tells them, in a period of time you can 
expect us to leave, and this is what we are going to do, we are giving 
them our playbook. If you look and see what some of our top leaders 
have said about that, General Petraeus said: We cannot leave without 
jeopardying the gains we have started to achieve.
  Those are the gains I talked about. Secretary Gates said: If we were 
to withdraw, leaving Iraq in chaos, al-Qaida most certainly would use 
Anbar Province as another base from which to plan operations.
  This is the type of thing we would be doing. I cannot imagine anyone 
would vote for any type of amendment that would tell the enemy 
specifically what we were going to do and when we were going to do it.
  Ambassador Crocker says: I cannot guarantee success in Iraq. I do 
believe, as I have described, it is attainable. I am certain that 
abandoning or drastically curtailing our efforts will bring failure, 
and the consequences of such failure must be clearly understood by us 
all.
  What are those consequences? It would be a vacuum. We have heard 
loudly and clearly from such people as President Ahmadi-Nejad who said:

       I can tell you there will be a power vacuum in the region. 
     [This is if we leave precipitously.] We are ready with other 
     regional countries such as Saudi Arabia, and the people of 
     Iraq to fill that vacuum.

  In other words, we leave, Iran comes in, al-Qaida comes in, all the 
advances, all the sacrifices, all the lives that have been lost will 
have been lost in vain.
  I cannot imagine anyone would vote for this amendment. I encourage my 
fellow Senators to oppose it.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, how much time remains?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. There is 7 minutes 10 seconds.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, this has been a very spirited and 
meaningful debate. The amendment that has

[[Page S11922]]

been offered by two people I respect greatly. I do not question their 
motives about loving our country anymore than I do. They are trying to 
find out what is best for Iraq and a very difficult situation. We have 
an honest disagreement.
  I think it has been a very healthy debate of reaching the same goal; 
that is, a successful outcome in Iraq. But make no mistake about it, 
from my point of view, the reason I oppose this resolution, it is a 
change in military strategy.
  Senator Reed talked about similarities between what General Petraeus 
said and what this resolution would do. There are some similarities, 
but it is a fundamental change in military strategy. After General 
Petraeus testified, is that wise for us to do that? Is it wise for the 
Congress to basically take operational control of this war from General 
Petraeus?
  Because that is what this resolution would do, it restructures our 
forces in a way he did not recommend. It would be a very overt 
rejection of General Petraeus's leadership, his strategy, his vision, 
and his recommendations. I think we need to understand that would be 
the consequence of passing this resolution.
  It would be saying, respectfully, no to General Petraeus and yes to 
the Congress in terms of how to run a war. I think that is not wise. It 
is the de facto return to the old strategy. For 3\1/2\ years, we had 
the strategy on the ground in Iraq that did not produce results that 
were beneficial.
  I am a military lawyer, and I have no expertise about how to invade a 
country or manage a population once the invasion is over. But I can 
tell you this based on common sense and 3\1/2\ years of experience. The 
old strategy was not working. The first trip to Baghdad after the fall 
of the capital, you were able to move around, it was a bit chaotic, but 
you were able to go downtown and do some things you have a hard time 
even doing today.
  But by the third trip to Baghdad after the fall, we were in a 
security environment, almost in a tank. So it was clear to me, training 
the Iraqi troops, having a small military footprint, was not achieving 
the security we needed for reconciliation. And the few ``dead-enders'' 
were the most resilient people in the world. If the insurgency was in 
its last throes, it was a deep throe.
  Every time I asked the people coming back who were running the old 
strategy and testifying to Congress, what is the general number of 
insurgents, about 5,000 hard-core insurgents. It is the most resilient 
5,000 in the world. They were able, certainly, to do a lot of havoc. 
Thank goodness we changed strategies.
  Senators Levin and Reed and others have been arguing for a very long 
time to change course and change strategies. The President heard that 
call. He sat down with military leaders and put a new commander in the 
field. We have, in fact, changed strategies. What did we do? We went a 
different way. Instead of withdrawing troops and doing more of the 
same, we added troops. As Senator Inhofe said, it is the best thing we 
have done. These additional 30,000 combat troops being interjected into 
the battlefield have paid off in security gains we have never seen 
before.
  Hats off to the surge. To those who are part of the surge, those who 
have been in Iraq for a very long time, I acknowledge and respect your 
success because the success has been undeniable. The challenges are 
also undeniable. But without the surge, there would have been no 
turnaround in Anbar. The people in Anbar had had enough of al-Qaida. We 
can't take credit for that. Al-Qaida overplayed its hand, and we had 
additional combat power in place to take advantage of a population that 
was ready to make a choice, a choice for the good. Their rejection of 
al-Qaida is not national political reconciliation, it is not embracing 
democracy. But it is good news because you have Sunni Arabs rejecting 
the al-Qaida agenda, and that is great news.
  This resolution not only is a rejection of General Petraeus's 
strategy, his vision for how to be successful, it has an impractical 
effect. The rules of engagement one would have to draft around 
implementing this strategy are almost impossible from my point of view. 
Just to train and fight al-Qaida, how do you do that, when you have all 
kinds of enemies running around Iraq, including Iran, including 
sectarian violence? The idea that we are going to change missions and 
adopt this resolution as a new mission and have such a limited military 
ability is unwise and impractical.
  It is a dangerous precedent for the Congress to set to withdraw from 
a military commander who has been successful the power to implement a 
strategy that has proven to be successful.
  The basic premise of the resolution is, if we change strategies, 
reject General Petraeus and go to the old strategy, which is, in 
essence, what we would be doing, it would bring about better 
reconciliation. My fundamental belief is that we will never have 
political reconciliation until we have better security. The new 
strategy, the surge, has brought about better security than we have 
ever had before in Iraq. Even though it is still a very dangerous 
place, there is no evidence to suggest that reconciliation would be 
enhanced by rejecting Petraeus and adopting the Congress's plan for 
Iraq. Quite the opposite. I think all of the evidence we have before us 
is that a smaller military footprint, when you are training and 
fighting behind walls, empowers the enemy. If we adopted this 
resolution, the security gains we have achieved would be lost. We would 
be abandoning people who have come forward to help us. We wouldn't have 
the military power to seize the momentum that has been gained from the 
surge. We would actually roll back the momentum that has been gained. 
We would put people at risk who have come forward to help us. For 
example, 12,000 people have joined the police force in Anbar in 2007. 
In 2006, only 1,000 people joined the police in Anbar. There is local 
reconciliation going on. There is a realization by the Iraqi people 
that now is the time to step forward. Their politicians are lagging 
behind the local population, but it will not be long before Baghdad 
understands that they have to reconcile their country through the 
political process. They will only do that with better security.
  When you reach across the aisle in America, you can pay a heavy price 
in terms of your political future. When you reach across the aisle in 
Baghdad, your family can be killed. Better security will breed more 
political reconciliation, not less. To abandon this strategy now, to 
substitute the Congress's judgment for General Petraeus's judgment, is 
ill-advised and unwarranted. Quite frankly, General Petraeus and the 
troops serving under him deserve our support and our respect, and they 
have earned the ability to carry on their mission. They have earned, 
based on success on the battlefield, the right to move forward as they 
deem to be militarily sound.
  The Congress is at 11 percent. Part of the reason we are at 11 
percent is that we don't seem to be able to come together and solve 
hard problems. Why do we believe we have a better insight into how to 
win this war than a battlefield commander who has produced results 
never known before? I don't think we do.
  I will end this debate in a respectful manner. We have the same goal, 
and that is to bring about political reconciliation and success in 
Iraq. Unfortunately, this goes backwards at a time when we need to go 
forward.
  (At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to 
be printed in the Record.)
 Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today I am necessarily absent to 
attend a funeral, and therefore will miss rollcall vote No. 346 on the 
Levin-Reed amendment to provide for a reduction and transition of U.S. 
forces in Iraq. As a cosponsor of this amendment, had I been present, I 
would have voted ``yea.''
  (At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to 
be printed in the Record.)
 Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I support passage of the Levin-Reed 
amendment and a new course of action in Iraq.
  This amendment makes three significant and important changes in our 
involvement in Iraq that to this point the administration has been 
unwilling to make, even though the American people have been demanding 
change for over a year.
  First, it removes our troops from the civil war they are now policing 
and gives them three achievable missions:

[[Page S11923]]

to conduct targeted counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida and 
affiliated terrorist organizations; to train and equip Iraqi Security 
Forces; and, to provide security for U.S. personnel and infrastructure.
  Second, the amendment calls for the safe redeployment of those troops 
not required for these three missions beginning in 3 months and to be 
completed within 9 months of this bill's passage.
  And finally this amendment acknowledges what we have known all along 
that there is no military solution to this conflict. It calls for the 
implementation of a comprehensive diplomatic, political, and economic 
strategy to jump start the process of reconciliation and stability. 
This strategy would include sustained engagement with Iraq's neighbors 
and the international community and the appointment of an international 
mediator in Iraq under the United Nations Security Council. The 
mediator would have the authority to engage the political, religious, 
ethnic, and tribal leaders in a political process that aims to avoid no 
one wants--regional civil war.
  For nearly 5 years, our troops have done everything asked of them. It 
is time for Iraqis to provide the security for their own country. I 
urge adoption of the Levin-Reed amendment.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the time 
between 9:50 and 10 a.m. will be equally divided between the two 
leaders or their designees, with the majority leader or his designee 
controlling the final 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, with this vote, the Senate faces, once 
again, a simple choice: whether to build on the successes of our new 
strategy and give General Petraeus and the troops under his command the 
time and support needed to carry out their mission, or to ignore the 
realities on the ground and legislate a premature end to our efforts in 
Iraq, accepting thereby the terrible consequences that will ensue.
  Many Senators wished to postpone this choice, preferring to await the 
testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. Last week these 
two career officers reported unambiguously that the new strategy is 
succeeding in Iraq. After nearly 4 years of mismanaged war, the 
situation on the ground in Iraq shows demonstrable signs of progress. 
Understanding what we now know--that our military is making progress on 
the ground, and that their commanders request from us the time and 
support necessary to succeed in Iraq--it is inconceivable that we in 
Congress would end this strategy just as it is beginning to show real 
results.
  General Petraeus reported in detail on these gains during his 
testimony in both Houses and in countless interviews. The No. 2 U.S. 
commander in Iraq, LTG Ray Odierno, said yesterday that the 7-month-old 
security operation has reduced violence in Baghdad by some 50 percent, 
that car bombs and suicide attacks in Baghdad have fallen to their 
lowest level in a year, and that civilian casualties have dropped from 
a high of 32 per day to 12 per day. His comments were echoed by LTG 
Abboud Qanbar, the Iraqi commander, who said that before the surge 
began, one third of Baghdad's 507 districts were under insurgent 
control. Today, he said, ``only five to six districts can be called hot 
areas.'' Anyone who has traveled recently to Anbar, or Diyala, or 
Baghdad, can see the improvements that have taken place over the past 
months. With violence down, commerce has risen and the bottom-up 
efforts to forge counterterrorism alliances are bearing tangible fruit.
  None of this is to argue that Baghdad or other regions have suddenly 
become safe, or that violence has come down to acceptable levels. As 
General Odierno pointed out, violence is still too high and there are 
many unsafe areas. Nevertheless, such positive developments illustrate 
General Petraeus's contention last week that American and Iraqi forces 
have achieved substantial progress under their new strategy.
  No one can guarantee success or be certain about its prospects. We 
can be sure, however, that should the United States Congress succeed in 
terminating the strategy by legislating an abrupt withdrawal and a 
transition to a new, less effective and more dangerous course--should 
we do that, then we will fail for certain.
  Let us make no mistake about the costs of such an American failure in 
Iraq. Many of my colleagues would like to believe that, should the 
amendment we are currently considering become law, it would mark the 
end of this long effort. They are wrong. Should the Congress force a 
precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, it would mark a new beginning, the 
start of a new, more dangerous effort to contain the forces unleashed 
by our disengagement. If we leave, we will be back--in Iraq and 
elsewhere--in many more desperate fights to protect our security and at 
an even greater cost in American lives and treasure.
  We cannot set a date for withdrawal without setting a date for 
surrender. Should we leave Iraq before there is a basic level of 
stability, we invite chaos, genocide, terrorist safehavens and regional 
war. We invite further Iranian influence at a time when Iranian 
operatives are already moving weapons, training fighters, providing 
resources, and helping plan operations to kill American soldiers and 
damage our efforts to bring stability to Iraq. If any of my colleagues 
remain unsure of Iran's intentions in the region, may I direct them to 
the recent remarks of the Iranian president, who said: ``The political 
power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly . . . Soon, we will see a 
huge power vacuum in the region. Of course, we are prepared to fill the 
gap.'' If our notions of national security have any meaning, they 
cannot include permitting the establishment of an Iranian dominated 
Middle East that is roiled by wider regional war and riddled with 
terrorist safehavens.
  The hour is indeed late in Iraq. How we have arrived at this critical 
and desperate moment has been well chronicled, and history's judgment 
about the long catalogue of mistakes in the prosecution of this war 
will be stern and unforgiving. But history will revere the honor and 
the sacrifice of those Americans, who despite the mistakes and failures 
of both civilian and military leaders, shouldered a rifle and risked 
everything--everything--so that the country they love so well might not 
suffer the many dangerous consequences of defeat.
  That is what General Petraeus, and the Americans he has the honor to 
command, are trying to do--to fight smarter and better, in a way that 
addresses and doesn't strengthen the tactics of the enemy, and to give 
the Iraqis the security and opportunity to make the necessary political 
decisions to save their country from the abyss of genocide and a 
permanent and spreading war. Now is not the time for us to lose our 
resolve. We must remain steadfast in our mission, for we do not fight 
only for the interests of Iraqis, Mr. President, we fight for ours as 
well.
  In this moment of serious peril for America, we must all of us 
remember to who and what we owe our first allegiance--to the security 
of the American people and to the ideals upon which we our Nation was 
founded. That responsibility is our dearest privilege and to be judged 
by history to have discharged it honorably will, in the end, matter so 
much more to all of us than any fleeting glory of popular acclaim, 
electoral advantage or office. I hope we might all have good reason to 
expect a kinder judgment of our flaws and follies because when it 
mattered most we chose to put the interests of this great and good 
Nation before our own, and helped, in our own small way, preserve for 
all humanity the magnificent and inspiring example of an assured, 
successful and ever advancing America and the ideals that make us still 
the greatest Nation on Earth.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I don't believe Senator McConnell is 
coming.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, it is morning here in Washington. It is dusk 
in Baghdad. As we debate this war yet again at home, another day draws 
to a close for our troops in Iraq. Tonight they will sleep on foreign 
sand. Tomorrow they will draw yet again from an endless well of courage 
to face another day of war. Some will likely die. Many will surely be 
wounded. They will face hatred they did not create and violence they 
cannot resolve.
  One soldier described the average day as ``being ordered into houses 
without knowing what was behind strangers' doors . . . walking along 
roadsides fearing the next step could trigger lethal explosives.''

[[Page S11924]]

  The soldier who told that story tragically took his own life while on 
his second deployment. His name was PFC Travis Virgadamo of Las Vegas. 
Travis was 19 years old when he took his life.
  As our troops rise in the morning, so will millions of innocent Iraqi 
citizens. Today thousands of Iraqis will abandon their homes and 
neighborhoods to flee as refugees to Iran, Jordan, Syria, and other 
countries. Those Iraqis who remain will face what has become the daily 
norm of life in Iraq--water shortages, no electricity, the constant 
threat of violence, and, as we learned today, cholera, an ancient 
disease that has now hit the ancient land of Iraq. Remember, 1.2 
million Iraqis have been killed since our military invasion. Our 
160,000 or 170,000 courageous troops and those innocent Iraqi men, 
women, and children will wake on the 1,646th day of this war, 1,646 
days and nights of war. I repeat, 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed 
since our military invasion.
  Here in Washington, DC, we have a choice to make minutes from now. If 
we reject this amendment before us, this war will rage on and on, with 
no end in sight. Our troops will remain caught in the crossfire of 
another country's civil war. Our Armed Forces will continue to be 
strained to the breaking point. But there is a choice. There can be 
light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. If we stand together and 
adopt this amendment, today can be known as the first day of the end of 
this war, the first day Congress fulfills its constitutional duty to 
have a plan to bring our soldiers and marines home. We can begin to 
return our troops to safety and give them the hero's welcome that has 
been earned and so long in coming. We can refocus our efforts on 
reaching the political solution that all experts, even the President's 
own generals, agree must be achieved. And we can return our focus to 
the grave and growing threat we face from Osama bin Laden and his al-
Qaida network, and others, who have the will and capability to do us 
harm.
  I stand today with my colleagues, Senators Levin and Reed, in support 
of this amendment. This is a terrific piece of legislation, legislation 
that recognizes the duties of this separate and equal branch of 
Government, the legislative branch. I am grateful for the few 
Republicans who have shown the courage to join us in a quest to end 
suffering, sorrow, and terror. Countless words, reams of paper, and so 
much ink have been spent on the Iraq debate in the Senate and in the 
country. So let me add this morning that this amendment is a reasonable 
and responsible way forward. This amendment sets a binding path well 
within our constitutional authority and without compromising our 
national security interests. This vote will come down to a question of 
courage and wisdom.
  President John Kennedy said:

       A man does what he must--in spite of personal consequences, 
     in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures--and that is 
     the basis of all human morality.

  In just a few hours it will be sundown, beginning the holiest day of 
the year for those of the Jewish faith, Yom Kippur. Reflecting on that, 
one needs only to look at the Old Testament, the book of Job, where Job 
asks: ``But where shall wisdom be found?''
  I say wisdom lies with the American people, a strong majority of 
Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who so oppose this war. I hope 
wisdom is found on the Senate floor today as well; that we follow the 
wishes, the demands, the hopes, and the prayers of the American people. 
When our grandchildren and generations to come study this war and this 
Government, I pray they will be able to say this was a turning point in 
a war that has cost us so much. I ask my Republican colleagues for the 
courage and wisdom to join the American people and bring our troops 
home. Courage and wisdom demands that we do such.
  I ask unanimous consent to start the vote. We will make sure that 
everyone has ample time to vote. We will vote as if it started at 10.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The question is on agreeing to amendment No. 2898.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. REID. I announce that the Senator from California (Mrs. Boxer), 
the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin), and the Senator from Vermont 
(Mr. Sanders) are necessarily absent.
  Mr. McCONNELL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett), the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. 
Domenici), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Lott).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. 
Domenici), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Lott) would have voted 
``nay.''
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Are there any other Senators in the 
Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 47, nays 47, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 346 Leg.]

                                YEAS--47

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Brown
     Byrd
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Clinton
     Conrad
     Dorgan
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Inouye
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lincoln
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Mikulski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Obama
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Salazar
     Schumer
     Smith
     Snowe
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Webb
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--47

     Alexander
     Allard
     Barrasso
     Bond
     Brownback
     Bunning
     Burr
     Chambliss
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Coleman
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Craig
     Crapo
     DeMint
     Dodd
     Dole
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Graham
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hatch
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Kyl
     Lieberman
     Lugar
     Martinez
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nelson (NE)
     Pryor
     Roberts
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Specter
     Stevens
     Sununu
     Thune
     Vitter
     Voinovich
     Warner

                             NOT VOTING--6

     Bennett
     Boxer
     Domenici
     Durbin
     Lott
     Sanders
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. On this vote, the yeas are 47, the 
nays are 47. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the 
adoption of this amendment, the amendment is withdrawn.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to 
lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, Senator McCain and I have had discussions 
with our leader, and I assume on their side, and this course of action 
has been cleared. Here is what we are proposing to do: The Biden 
amendment is going to be laid down today. There will be perhaps an hour 
or so on that amendment--perhaps more; there is no time limit on debate 
today. There will be no more votes today, as the leaders announced. But 
on Monday, we will make an effort--let me go back. On Tuesday at 10 
o'clock, we are going to have a unanimous consent agreement that the 
Biden amendment will be voted on at 10 o'clock on Tuesday. That is 
going to be part of a unanimous consent agreement that is being 
prepared.
  In addition, in terms of the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, there will be 
some debate on that today, and on Monday, and we will make an effort to 
see if we can't agree on a time certain on Tuesday, after the Biden 
amendment is disposed of on Tuesday. But we can't commit to that now. 
We will make a good-faith effort on Monday to set up that time on 
Tuesday, after the Biden amendment is disposed of.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I think we are headed in the right 
direction. We may have to drag that vote--not drag it but set it for 
10:15. We usually don't come in on Tuesdays until 10 o'clock, so would 
10:15 be OK?
  Mr. BIDEN. I know this is unusual. Mr. President, if we could start 
that at

[[Page S11925]]

10 and we didn't drag it, it would be better.
  Mr. REID. I would say to my friend, on Tuesdays we don't come into 
session until 10 o'clock. There are meetings going on in the Capitol 
and people can't be here until 10, but we could set the vote for 
shortly thereafter, 10 after or something like that, but it takes a 
little while.
  Mr. BIDEN. OK. That is not a very senatorial response, but OK.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, could I say I thank Senator Levin, Senator 
Reid, and Senator Biden. Senator Lieberman and Senator Kyl will be 
discussing their amendment, which is a very important amendment 
concerning Iran so that everybody will have a good idea, and they will 
be discussing it again on Monday--or debating it. I would hope, as the 
distinguished chairman has said, that we could probably vote on the 
Kyl-Lieberman amendment very shortly after the vote on the Biden 
amendment, yet we are unable to put that in concrete. There may be a 
side by side, there may not be.
  I wish to remind my colleagues again, if I could, this is the 13th 
day of debate now, and we have had 79 hours of debate on this bill. The 
Wounded Warriors legislation is still waiting, the pay raise, so many 
other things that are vital to, I believe, the men and women who are 
serving and the security of this Nation. What I hope--and I know 
Senator Levin who is managing this bill would agree--is that once we 
finish the Iraq issue, we should be able to move through the other 
amendments rather quickly. We are obviously running out of time. The 
first of October is upon us. So I hope we can finish the Iraq 
amendments as quickly as possible and move on to the 100 or so 
amendments we have on the bill itself. I thank the chairman for all of 
the cooperation and hard work he has done on this bill.

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I agree with my good friend from Arizona on 
the need to move forward. We have literally hundreds of amendments we 
are working on. At some point next week we are going to have to find a 
way to end this. We have made efforts with unanimous consent proposals 
to cut off on amendments, but they have been objected to, and then more 
flood in. We have to get to an end point.
  However, in reference to the Wounded Warriors legislation, there is a 
separate bill on which I think appointing conferees has been cleared on 
this side. I am wondering if the Senator from Arizona might check with 
his side to see whether the appointment of conferees could be cleared. 
I think it will be part of this bill at the end. It is important that 
we move this bill for a lot of reasons, including that one.
  But we have a fallback. We have a safety valve. We also have a 
separate bill which we would like to get to conference, and if the 
ranking member could check on the Republican side and see if we can get 
the clearance for the appointment of conferees, it may give us some 
momentum.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I thank the chairman. I agree. I will make 
every effort to do that. I am confident that no one on this side would 
object. It has to be done. Everyplace I go, I hear concern and the 
continued outrage about the situation that existed at Walter Reed, and 
the American people are not confident that we have taken the necessary 
measures to provide for the care of our veterans.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Delaware is 
recognized.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, before I send an amendment to the desk, I 
do not want to in any way disagree with anything that was said but 
expand on it slightly. There is a Biden-Brownback amendment. Senator 
Brownback is a major sponsor of this amendment, and I will yield to him 
in a moment because he has a difficult scheduling dilemma. I will let 
him go first. I also want to make it clear that Senators Boxer, Kerry, 
Specter, probably Hutchison, and others are going to want to speak to 
this amendment.
  I am assuming that on Monday this will still be the pending business 
and that we will be able to continue to discuss and debate this issue, 
so Senators have time. This is an important weekend in the Jewish 
faith, so a lot of people are not here. But I assume, notwithstanding 
the fact that we are going to vote shortly after we convene on Tuesday 
morning, that we will have an opportunity to speak to this on Monday as 
well.
  Now, today I will offer an amendment to the Defense authorization 
bill concerning U.S. policy in Iraq. As I said, I am joined by a 
bipartisan group of colleagues, including Senators Brownback, Boxer, 
Specter, Kerry, and, I believe, Senator Hutchison. Our amendment says 
it should be the policy of the United States to support a political 
settlement in Iraq based on the principles of federalism. I have much 
more to say about this. Again, I thank my friend from Kansas who has 
been a major proponent of this approach for some time. We joined forces 
together months ago. He has a very tight schedule, so he will speak 
first. I see Senator Hutchison standing also.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I just ask the Senator, if he will 
yield briefly, is it possible that I may make a 2-minute statement 
after Senator Brownback, and then I will come back on Monday as well?
  Mr. BIDEN. Possibly, Senator Brownback would let the Senator from 
Texas proceed for 2 minutes now.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Yes, I will yield to the Senator from Texas before I 
speak.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas is 
recognized for 2 minutes.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, thank you. Monday, I will make longer 
comments. I am a cosponsor of this amendment. I have said for a long 
time it is my belief that if we could allow the sectors of Iraq to have 
their own semiautonomous government, like is now in the northern part 
with the Kurds--and the southern part is mostly Shia--I think we could 
really begin to see economic stability, as well as political stability.
  Of course, we all know we should have oil revenue that would go to 
all of the people of Iraq, fairly allocated. But I think we have seen 
in Bosnia a lessening of tensions when there is a capability for the 
security forces, the educational and the religious sects to have their 
own ability to govern within themselves. If we can get economic 
stability, which is largely untalked about in the United States, I 
think that would bring the political stability along.
  So I commend Senator Biden. I have written on this as well. Senator 
Brownback and I have talked about this in many forums. It is important 
that we look at not only the great success we are having, which General 
Petraeus reported on, we are stabilizing the country on the security 
side. We are keeping our commitments. We are going to be able to do it 
with fewer Americans and bring the Iraqi troops forward, but it will 
not stabilize Iraq. We must have economic and political security. So I 
thank the chairman, and I thank Senator Brownback. I will speak again 
Monday. It is the most important sense of the Senate that we can have 
on this bill. Thank you.


                Amendment No. 2997 to amendment No. 2011

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2997.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Delaware [Mr. Biden], for himself, Mr. 
     Brownback, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. Specter, Mr. Kerry, Mr. Smith, Mr. 
     Nelson of Florida, Mrs. Hutchison, Mr. Schumer, Ms. Mikulski, 
     and Mrs. Lincoln, proposes an amendment number 2997.

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

   (Purpose: To express the sense of Congress on federalism in Iraq)

       At the end of subtitle C of title XV, add the following:

     SEC. 1535. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON FEDERALISM IN IRAQ.

       (a) Findings.--Congress makes the following findings:
       (1) Iraq continues to experience a self-sustaining cycle of 
     sectarian violence.
       (2) The ongoing sectarian violence presents a threat to 
     regional and world peace, and the long-term security 
     interests of the United States are best served by an Iraq 
     that is stable, not a haven for terrorists, and not a threat 
     to its neighbors.
       (3) Iraqis must reach a comprehensive and sustainable 
     political settlement in order to

[[Page S11926]]

     achieve stability, and the failure of the Iraqis to reach 
     such a settlement is a primary cause of increasing violence 
     in Iraq.
       (4) The Key Judgments of the January 2007 National 
     Intelligence Estimate entitled ``Prospects for Iraq's 
     Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead'' state, ``A number of 
     identifiable developments could help to reverse the negative 
     trends driving Iraq's current trajectory. They include: 
     Broader Sunni acceptance of the current political structure 
     and federalism to begin to reduce one of the major sources of 
     Iraq's instability . . . Significant concessions by Shia and 
     Kurds to create space for Sunni acceptance of federalism''.
       (5) Article One of the Constitution of Iraq declares Iraq 
     to be a ``single, independent federal state''.
       (6) Section Five of the Constitution of Iraq declares that 
     the ``federal system in the Republic of Iraq is made up of a 
     decentralized capital, regions, and governorates, and local 
     administrations'' and enumerates the expansive powers of 
     regions and the limited powers of the central government and 
     establishes the mechanisms for the creation of new federal 
     regions.
       (7) The federal system created by the Constitution of Iraq 
     would give Iraqis local control over their police and certain 
     laws, including those related to employment, education, 
     religion, and marriage.
       (8) The Constitution of Iraq recognizes the administrative 
     role of the Kurdistan Regional Government in 3 northern Iraqi 
     provinces, known also as the Kurdistan Region.
       (9) The Kurdistan region, recognized by the Constitution of 
     Iraq, is largely stable and peaceful.
       (10) The Iraqi Parliament approved a federalism law on 
     October 11th, 2006, which establishes procedures for the 
     creation of new federal regions and will go into effect 18 
     months after approval.
       (11) Iraqis recognize Baghdad as the capital of Iraq, and 
     the Constitution of Iraq stipulates that Baghdad may not 
     merge with any federal region.
       (12) Despite their differences, Iraq's sectarian and ethnic 
     groups support the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq.
       (13) Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stated on 
     November 27, 2006, ``The crisis is political, and the ones 
     who can stop the cycle of aggravation and bloodletting of 
     innocents are the politicians''.
       (b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that--
       (1) the United States should actively support a political 
     settlement among Iraq's major factions based upon the 
     provisions of the Constitution of Iraq that create a federal 
     system of government and allow for the creation of federal 
     regions;
       (2) the active support referred to in paragraph (1) should 
     include--
       (A) calling on the international community, including 
     countries with troops in Iraq, the permanent 5 members of the 
     United Nations Security Council, members of the Gulf 
     Cooperation Council, and Iraq's neighbors--
       (i) to support an Iraqi political settlement based on 
     federalism;
       (ii) to acknowledge the sovereignty and territorial 
     integrity of Iraq; and
       (iii) to fulfill commitments for the urgent delivery of 
     significant assistance and debt relief to Iraq, especially 
     those made by the member states of the Gulf Cooperation 
     Council;
       (B) further calling on Iraq's neighbors to pledge not to 
     intervene in or destabilize Iraq and to agree to related 
     verification mechanisms; and
       (C) convening a conference for Iraqis to reach an agreement 
     on a comprehensive political settlement based on the creation 
     of federal regions within a united Iraq;
       (3) the United States should urge the Government of Iraq to 
     quickly agree upon and implement a law providing for the 
     equitable distribution of oil revenues, which is a critical 
     component of a comprehensive political settlement based upon 
     federalism; and
       (4) the steps described in paragraphs (1), (2), and (3) 
     could lead to an Iraq that is stable, not a haven for 
     terrorists, and not a threat to its neighbors.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I yield to my friend from Kansas, Senator 
Brownback.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Kansas is 
recognized.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for that, for this 
amendment, and for his insight and prophetic view of what is really 
taking place. Senator Biden has mentioned for over a year that the 
likely outcome in Iraq is going to be a federalism model where you have 
most of your power in the states--the Kurdish north, the Sunni west, 
the Shia south, and Baghdad as the federal city.
  I think we have had, hopefully now, enough debate about the military 
situation in Iraq. It is an important one, but we have not had much, if 
any, discussion about the political situation in Iraq. Last week, all 
the focus was on General Petraeus, and there was another individual who 
testified, Ambassador Crocker. General Petraeus talked about the 
military situation, and Ambassador Crocker talked about the political 
situation.
  Regarding the military situation, I think we have seen incredible 
progress by the dedicated men and women in uniform, but we have seen 
little to no political progress. This discussion is about a ``political 
surge.'' We have had the military surge. It is moving forward and 
getting things done and stabilizing. All it can do is provide space for 
a political solution. It cannot put forward a solution that will last. 
You have to have that politically. So what we are going to talk about 
with this resolution is a political surge. Those are not my words; they 
are Thomas Friedman's. I think it is apt and its timing is right. I 
urge my colleagues to look at this resolution and support what this 
is--that we need a political surge, and we need to recognize the 
demographics on the ground.
  This resolution simply calls for the following things: A conference 
where Iraqis reach a political settlement based on federalism; in 
effect, an agreement on new and already constitutionally recognized 
federal regions. This doesn't require a change in the Iraqi 
Constitution. It is already there. They allow the Kurdish north as a 
state. This would be allowing other states within Iraq.
  No. 2, it calls on the international community to respect the results 
of that conference and to support federalism in Iraq, which is a 
concept we are very familiar with in the United States. I think that is 
really the key for it to work in Iraq.
  No. 3, it calls on the Iraqi Government to resolve the issue of 
distributing oil revenues, which is crucial to any federal solution in 
Iraq. It is the oil that will keep the whole place together.
  I show my colleagues a map that I think is kind of interesting. It is 
a map of Iraq under the Ottoman Empire. It is prior to the World War I 
divisions in Iraq. I think we ought to study history to keep from 
repeating past mistakes. I think we are repeating history now because 
we have not studied it sufficiently. So here is a map from 1914. This 
is fascinating. You have the north Ottoman, which were called vilayets. 
This is in the State of Mosul, the Kurdish north. You had the vilayet 
of Baghdad, the Sunni area in Iraq. You had the vilayet of Basra, the 
Shia State. Baghdad was the federal city--a very effective city at that 
particular time.
  As much as a third of the population there was Jewish at that point 
in time. Those were the governing bodies within this region. The 
Ottoman Empire was concerned about whether the Basra region and the 
Shia there would stay with them or go with the Persians at that time. 
It is a similar discussion we are hearing today.
  My reason for saying this is, if you can put it in a certain term, 
this is natural in Iraq. Instead of us trying to force together a 
country under Shia domination--and under the current setup all you are 
ever going to get is a Shia government, but it is going to be a weak 
one because the Kurds are not going to agree with a strong Shia 
government, nor are the Sunnis. All you can ever get is a weak Shia 
government that has a lot of question marks in it from the Sunnis. They 
don't trust the Shia, and the Shia don't trust the Sunnis. The Sunnis 
think they ought to run the whole country, as they have for the past 
century. They think the Sunnis are going to come back.
  I was in Iraq in January. I went to the north, and I was in Baghdad. 
The Kurds are prospering, stable, growing, and investment is taking 
place. I will show you a map later of people moving from Baghdad to the 
northern portion because it is stable. I was meeting with the Sunni and 
Shia leaders in Baghdad. The Shia said: We could get this solved if it 
wasn't for the Sunni. The Sunni leaders would say: We could get this 
solved if it wasn't for the Shia. The Shia leaders were saying: We 
could get this solved if it wasn't for the Sunnis.
  I submit to this body that we have a flawed political design that we 
are pushing currently in Baghdad. That is why we have not seen the 
political progress that we need to see taking place. We have done the 
military surge, which has been successful. Now we need a political 
surge. We need to send in a Jim Baker or a Condoleezza Rice to get 
these people in a room to cut the deal to get different states, where 
you have the power mostly residing in the states. Right now, in the 
Kurdish north, they run their own military, their own police, and they 
are stable. So you allow that and you even encourage that to take 
place. It is in the Iraqi

[[Page S11927]]

Constitution to allow that. That is how the Kurds got their region in 
the first place. That is a political design that can lead to political 
stability on the ground so that we can pull our troops back.
  This amendment says nothing about the troops. We have debated that a 
long time--the military side. This is all about the political side 
where we have failed to see the progress. But it does say, if we can 
get that political solution, we should push it forward. I submit that 
on the military side, if we can get some political stability in Iraq, 
we can start to pull our troops back from patrolling.
  Ultimately, I think you are going to see long-term U.S. military 
bases in the north, probably in the west, and around Baghdad. But they 
can be bases where we can operate without our people being killed every 
day. As everybody in this body knows, we are still in South Korea 60 
years after that conflict. We are still in Bosnia 15 years after that 
conflict. We can stay--and we usually do stay--in a place a long period 
of time to provide stability, as long as our people are not getting 
killed. Here is the design where you can stay for a long period of 
time--because I believe we will need to stay for a long time--without 
our men and women being killed. It reflects a demographic reality on 
the ground and the historic reality on the ground. It also recognizes 
that Iraq needs to have a strong state, weak federal form of government 
to reflect the different groups. Iraq, in many respects, is less a 
country than it is three groups held together by exterior forces. The 
Turks don't want the Kurds to be a separate country in the north. The 
Kurds already voted 90 percent that they want to have a separate 
country, but they are not pushing it today because they know they 
cannot do it at this point. So they are willing to stay within this 
situation.
  The Sunnis believe they should run Iraq, but they are less than 20 
percent of the population. That is not going to happen. The Shia lack a 
comfort that they can control the country, but they are certainly 
dominant in a particular region.
  I wish to show an ancient map of this very same situation to give an 
another flavor and context. Of course, under the Ottomans, it was 
called Mesopotamia during that period of time. Again, here is a three-
state solution that the Ottoman Empire put in place as a way of 
managing these different groups who do not agree with one another, who 
do not get along.
  One can say: Wait a minute, there is a lot of intermarrying, there 
are a lot of Sunni-Shia relations that are taking place and have taken 
place over the years of being together as one country. You are trying 
to go back rather than go forward.
  I wish to show a map of the former Yugoslavia right after Tito left 
and before some of the civil wars started in Yugoslavia because I think 
it is instructive. Here is a map of the ethnic composition before the 
war in 1991. It is an ethnic map that shows where the Croats, the 
Bosnians, and the Serbs were in this area in 1991. The reason I point 
this out is, I was in this country in 1991. I was there the week after 
the Slovenians voted to secede from the rest of Yugoslavia. I was in a 
conference with groups from all over the country. I couldn't tell the 
difference between the various ethnic groups.
  When I would look, I couldn't tell if this person was a Croat or a 
Serb or a Macedonian, this, that. I couldn't tell the difference. It 
made no sense to me. These guys had been in a country together for 
decades. Why wouldn't they stay together? They knew the differences. 
They knew what happened. They knew the history. They had intermarried 
to where they had different ethnic groups who were married into the 
same families and spread, splotched all over the country. There were 
concentrations in different places, but over a period of, I think, 70 
years, under a hard dictatorial rule, under Tito, with a tough military 
and a tough intelligence apparatus, if someone got out of control, they 
were dead or in jail--similar to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, who ran 
roughshod and people intermingled.
  Then we started to see political leadership come forward and say: We 
Serbs have been mistreated by this group and you know what they did to 
us a century ago and you know what they did to us in this war and you 
know what they did to us 500 years ago, and we shouldn't be treated 
that way. We had a leader come up that hit this visceral inside note 
and started a bunch of wars, to where they sorted themselves out.
  This is what happens after you get a group of leaders standing up and 
saying they shouldn't treat the Croats this way, they shouldn't treat 
the Serbs this way. We can see the purity of the map--Bosnians, Serbs, 
Croats--and by 1995--this is the Dayton peace accords--you can see what 
takes place after that. That leader touched that visceral note about 
this is who we are and they shouldn't treat us that way and there were 
a bunch of people killed in the process as well.
  Finally, there was enough fighting and we got a political surge in 
the Dayton accords and made the leaders come together. We drew a line, 
Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the Dayton peace agreement. We still have troops 
in this area enforcing this accord, but they are not fighting and 
killing each other. There are still problems that take place. But this 
was a two-state solution in one country, with the United States pushing 
a political surge to take place and the United States still having 
troops there to make sure people do not get out of line.
  I went to Sarajevo when it started to stabilize. The place was still 
shellshocked about what had taken place. People were still saying: We 
used to live in peace; what happened here? What happened was somebody 
pushed the ethnic button and it worked, and it works in too many places 
in the world, and it works in Iraq, unfortunately.
  I wish to show a chart of what happened in Baghdad on ethnic splits 
and the movements taking place in Baghdad. This is a military chart. It 
is too busy of a chart, and there are some who dispute some of the 
movements. I am willing to grant them that there may be others with a 
slightly different factual variation.
  Basically, the Tigris River is in the middle. We see the Sunnis 
moving and purifying west of the Tigris River and the Shia moving and 
purifying east of the Tigris River. These diagonal lines show 
communities that are going more Shia and the diagonal lines in the 
opposite direction are communities going more Sunni, and we see small 
ethnic groups, small Christian populations who are either going into 
smaller, tighter communities or going north into the Kurdish region of 
the country.
  This is happening now. This is what is happening now. We have heard 
about the death squads, threats, and families forced to move taking 
place in Baghdad. When a number of leaders push the ethnic sectarian 
button, it hits this inside visceral note. It is a strange concept to 
us as Americans. They come from everywhere, and we say: Can't you guys 
get along? Believe me, this is a reality in the world, and it is a big 
reality in Iraq, particularly in a place that is more three groups than 
it is one country.
  I wish to give a caveat. The New York Times on Monday questioned the 
purity of this information, saying there are some Shia moving into 
Sunni areas and there are some Sunni moving into Shia areas, and I am 
willing to give that taking place. These are the megatrends that are 
happening, and I don't think there is any question about it.
  There has been a lot of death, killing with this taking place. It is 
the same with Bosnia-Herzegovina. What I am saying is rather than 
having a whole bunch of people get killed from this point forward, why 
don't we recognize the demographic realities on the ground and put this 
in a series of states where the ethnic group is running it and stop the 
killing or certainly reduce it substantially. That is what this 
amendment calls for.
  I wish to show my colleagues some of the maps of current Iraq, to 
give an idea. I have shown the Ottoman Empire maps. This is modern 
Iraq, as far as the populations are going. We have the Sunni Kurds in 
the north. Again, this is the most stable, growing area. When I was 
there, there were cranes and building and investment taking place. It 
is moving forward. We have the Sunni area in the west and the Shia area 
in the south. There are areas of Sunni Arab and Shia Arab. There is a 
mix of Shia-Sunni with Baghdad in the

[[Page S11928]]

center. Again, we have three blocs who have pretty much split up. This 
is modern Iraq.

  This is not a perfect solution by any means. As an American, I look 
at it as a subpar solution altogether because I think they would be 
much better off if they could get along and form one country and 
operate it as one country without having to give decentralization so 
much of the power.
  The problem is it does not reflect the realities on the ground. The 
problem is, too--think about Ambassador Crocker's testimony, think 
about the GAO report on political progress and the benchmarks that the 
Congress set. Think about those because militarily--I think 
``militarily'' we have done a great job and that is where all the focus 
is. But politically we are not getting it done because we are trying to 
put a square peg in a round hole. It doesn't work. We can push a long 
time on it and we can get some artificial setting to take place and we 
can enforce it with our military power, but as soon as we pull back, 
then we are going to have the same problems taking place in the region. 
This amendment recognizes we should put a round peg in a round hole, 
and it is something we can do.
  There was a gentleman who said something to me years ago that stuck 
with me: If you see a straight-line border in the Middle East or 
Africa, you ought to raise a question as to whether it reflects 
demographic reality.
  In the past, when different groups went into a region, whether the 
Ottomans, the British, the French, or others, they were trying to 
balance interests. They were trying to balance Hutus versus Tutsis. 
They were trying to balance previously the Armenians and Azerbaijanis. 
So they were always trying to get a balance of power because they 
didn't have enough troops to maintain the country, but if it kept these 
guys off center and not after each other, they could maintain the 
country.
  When you pull the colonial power off or when you pull the dictator 
off who is ruthlessness, who is willing to use military and to use his 
intelligence operation to kill people, when you pull that off, what are 
you left with? You are left with these same groups, and they still 
don't like each other. That is why we have to look at it this way.
  Look at Sudan today. I can give another example: The north Arab 
Muslims with a radicalized government started by Osama bin Laden. The 
south is Black, primarily Christian--long conflict, 20 years of civil 
war, millions killed. Finally, the Bush administration, to their 
credit, was able to negotiate a Sudan peace agreement, and the southern 
Sudanese will vote whether to secede. I believe they will in large 
numbers. It will pass big, and there will be a second Sudan.
  We now have a second genocide in Darfur. I have been to many of these 
places. I have worked with many of these people. The west is Black 
Muslim. The capital is Arab Muslim. They don't get along. One is a 
group of herders and another is a group of farmers--farmers and 
ranchers not getting along. I think we are going to see ultimately that 
Darfur will break away.
  Sudan is the biggest country in Africa landmasswise, but when the 
Brits put it together, they put several groups together who don't agree 
with each other and don't get along and the Government favors one. They 
favor the herders in Darfur; the jingaweit, the Arab Muslims. They are 
trying to drive the farmers off the land, and they are in their second 
genocide, with 400,000 people killed, because somebody, again, hit the 
ethnic-sectarian button, and it is very effective. One can motivate a 
lot of people by hitting that button.
  Why do we have to kill all the people to get to a political solution? 
Why do so many people have to die? It is past time--the military 
discussion has been a good discussion, but it is time for us to look at 
the political situation in Iraq and get on a model that can actually 
produce long-term stability so we can pull our military back into 
bases. We are going to need to be there for a long period of time. This 
resolution does nothing on the military side, but I think we are going 
to need to be there for some period of time. We need to be in the north 
to assure the Turks that the Kurds are not going to try to separate 
into a separate country, and I think we need to be there to protect the 
Kurds from Iran, and somewhat from the Turks, and the Sunnis will ask 
us for a long-term military presence in the west to protect them from 
the Shia. I think the Saudis are going to push for that to take place.
  Again, Iraq is a lot more three groups held together by exterior 
forces than it is a country. But that is the reality. The Shia area has 
to sort out who is going to be the leaders in that country, and they 
are fighting amongst themselves. It may be more than three states. It 
may be a couple of Shia states will evolve. We shouldn't stop that from 
taking place if that is the natural reality.
  We can fight against these things in nature or we can recognize them 
and try to build political systems around them. This resolution urges 
us to build the political solutions around them.
  Again, the political surge, led by Jim Baker, of stature, or 
Condoleezza Rice--cut the deal, get us into a political solution that 
can produce the benchmarks we want so we can pull our troops back and 
stop getting killed.
  I urge my colleagues to look at this amendment. I urge my colleagues 
to look at the history of what we are dealing with. There are many 
papers that have been written on this issue. O'Hanlon is one of the 
lead authors on it who got back recently. This is something that can 
work, can make progress and move us forward.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, as my friend from Kansas leaves, let me 
just thank him for his leadership here and his insight. I think he and 
I would agree that this is forming critical mass. Every once in a while 
in American politics, on a major issue, there is an idea that 
transcends both sides of this aisle and transcends from the experts to 
the average people because there is a commonsense ingredient to it as 
well as a deeper insightful notion of how that part of the world works. 
This is one of those issues.
  I just wanted to say I am honored to be joined by Senator Brownback 
in this effort because he and I both have other agendas in terms of our 
political careers, but I think we both agree getting this right is more 
important than who is President of the United States of America. This 
is about life and death and about whether we are going to have a 
generation of difficulty for America in that part of the world or 
whether we are going to be able to ultimately leave and not leave chaos 
behind.
  So I thank my friend for doing what I am sure was not an easy thing 
to do as a Presidential candidate on the Republican side--to join with 
a Democrat to move what at the time we moved it was still a very 
controversial idea.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, if my colleague will yield, I wish to 
thank my colleague also for working on this and for leading when it was 
a lonely battle. He was talking about this over a year ago, and I was 
hearing him saying it and thinking, he is probably right, but that is 
not the way we are headed. And it probably doesn't help him, running 
for President, to be associated with me, and it doesn't particularly 
help me, Senator Biden, to be associated with you. But that is exactly 
why the country gets mad, because they do not see us doing things like 
this on something that really makes sense.
  I talk a lot about this on the campaign trail, running for President 
on the Republican side, and people look at it, and I don't think I have 
had even one or two people come up to me and say they disagree with it. 
Most people say: OK, that makes sense. And when you talk with the 
Sunnis and Shias and particularly with the Kurds, they all say yes, and 
particularly the Kurds do. The Sunnis are coming more and more around 
to it, and I think the Shias are recognizing it as well.
  But my best successes on this floor have come when I have associated 
with somebody on the other side who disagrees with me on a lot of 
political

[[Page S11929]]

issues but we look at this one together and we say: This is something 
which can work. We did that with Senator Wellstone on human 
trafficking. We were as different as could be on different issues, but 
we got that one done, and today there are fewer people being 
trafficked.
  This is something which can work, and I appreciate my colleague for 
leading on it, and I really hope the rest of the body can look at this 
and say: This is where we have not seen progress, is politically, and 
let's get this moving forward. I am delighted at the Senator's 
leadership on it.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following my remarks, 
Senator Lugar be recognized for up to 30 minutes and that Senator 
Kennedy then be recognized to speak as in morning business.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, to alert my colleagues, I will take 
somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes to speak on this issue this 
morning, and I will speak on it again prior to our finally voting on it 
on Tuesday.
  Look, as I said, I have been a Senator since I was 29 years old. I 
have been here for seven Presidents, and I have observed that 
sometimes, on issues relating to national crises, whether it be 
domestic or foreign, events conspire to generate the kind of support 
for an idea that when it was first offered had few adherents. I think 
we are approaching that now.
  The amendment Senators Brownback, Boxer, Specter, Kerry, and I, as 
well as Senator Hutchison and others have says that U.S. policy should 
support a political settlement in Iraq based on the principles of 
federalism. Look, for all the division in Washington and across the 
country over the policy in Iraq, one thing just about everyone accepts, 
literally--left, right, center, the President, the Congress, the 
American people, and the so-called experts--is that there is no 
military solution in Iraq. Let me say that again. There is no military 
solution in Iraq.
  I, along with Senator McCain--in fact, shortly after the war began--
said that I thought it was foolish to start this war. But once we 
started it, I thought: My Lord, we should have more American forces 
there. I argued for up to 100,000 more American forces in the first 
year so things would not get out of hand. I argued we needed 5,900 
Gendarme paramilitary police from the international community. The 
Europeans were prepared to participate to literally restore order--make 
sure people didn't run the traffic lights or break into museums or 
engage in thuggery and robbery and crimes of ordinary violence, having 
nothing to do with sectarian divides. But we have passed that point.
  To paraphrase General Petraeus, although he doesn't seem to be as 
adherent to his original comment, and he was paraphrasing someone 
else--I believe it was 3 or 4 years ago when we were in Iraq with him, 
and I am looking over my shoulder at my staff generally; at the time I 
think it was 3 years ago--he said, and I am paraphrasing, there comes a 
point in every liberation where it becomes an occupation. There comes a 
point in every liberation effort where it becomes an occupation. And we 
have reached that point. We reached that point 3 years ago. I argued we 
reached that point when we went in.

  We had one brief, brief moment where, having mistakenly moved when we 
did, in my view, had we acted more responsibly instead of out of the 
arrogance and hubris that existed, we might, we might have been able to 
change the dynamic drastically. But that has long passed. That has long 
passed.
  I guess the point I want to make, again, and the end result of all I 
am saying here is you will not find a single person who thinks that a 
military solution will work alone. So what we are all about here today 
is what everybody says: OK, there has to be a political solution, but 
literally, I say to you, Mr. President, up to this moment no one on the 
floor of the Senate has offered a political solution. I mean, it is 
really fundamental. There is nobody who has said: We all acknowledge 
there is no military solution. And by the way, I am not claiming I am 
the only one. I have many cosponsors. We have a lot of people now 
saying: OK, we acknowledge there is a need for a political solution, 
embedded in the notion I have been pushing for a couple of years now 
and in detail for the last year and a half or so with Les Gelb.
  I have to recognize Les Gelb, a former administration official in a 
Democratic administration, in the Carter administration, the president 
emeritus of the New York Council on Foreign Relations, an incredibly 
respected voice in American foreign policy, and thought of as a genuine 
scholar. Les and I started off not in full agreement of what that 
political solution was, but we were all on the same page. The end 
result of all this is that the underlying premise of Les Gelb and Joe 
Biden in generating this was that the political solution we are 
proposing, which is what the Iraqi Constitution essentially calls for--
and it is not partition--is federalism.
  Well, guess what. It is not going to happen spontaneously. The Iraqis 
aren't going to spontaneously decide in the midst of what is now a 
civil war and sectarian strife that they know how to do it on their 
own.
  So getting back to the political question, everyone says there is a 
need for a political solution. But that begs the question, So what is 
your political solution?
  The critics, and there is legitimate criticism of the Biden-Gelb 
plan, but the critics have come along and said: I don't like your plan, 
Biden. My response has been from the outset: If you don't like mine, 
what is yours? Think about it. Think about, as you consider whether the 
Biden-Brownback plan, which is essentially taking Biden-Gelb and 
putting it into an amendment to the Defense authorization bill--think 
about what it says. We say this is our political solution. This is what 
we think is the way out.
  So as I began this debate, my invitation to my colleagues was: I get 
it. You may not like all parts of it. You may not like it. You may 
think it is mostly correct. You may be able to legitimately point out 
there are weaknesses in it; things may or may not happen. I can't 
guarantee an outcome to this. But I would like you to think about it. 
If you don't like Biden's proposal, what is your idea?
  Up to now, a lot of us have had what we voted on just a moment ago. 
It started off as the Biden-Hagel-Levin amendment back in January and 
February. I agree with it totally. It is now Levin-Reed. I think it is 
a good amendment. It is essentially the same one we voted on twice 
before. I was the author of it, along with my friend from Michigan, the 
leader of the Armed Services Committee. But the truth is, it is not a 
political solution. It is an important tactic to reach the point we all 
want to reach.
  And what is that? When you cut through all of this, what is it the 
American people, what is it all my colleagues, all 100 of us, want? No 
one wants to keep American forces there, with almost 3,800 dead, close 
to 28,000 wounded, roughly 14,000 severely wounded and who are going to 
require medical attention and care the rest of their lives. No one in 
here wants that. If we could wave a wand, there is not a single Member, 
from the most conservative to the most liberal in this body, who 
wouldn't take every troop out if they could, tomorrow. We don't want 
our kids going. I don't want my son going, my daughter going. I don't 
want my grandkids going, either.
  What is recognized underneath all of this is there is a clear 
understanding that even though most of us on this side of the aisle 
opposed what the President did and how he did it, there is a 
recognition that it matters what we leave behind. It matters a whole 
bunch. It matters for our grandchildren. It matters for our children.
  Look, folks, there is an overwhelming desire. I live with a woman I 
adore. We have been married for 30 years. She is unalterably opposed to 
this war. She, like every mother, lives in fear that her son, who is a 
captain in the Army, is going to be sent over, which is probable. So 
her fervent wish every time I go home is: Joe, get them out of there. 
Get them out of there. You are chairman of the Foreign Relations 
Committee; get them out of there. Well, the truth is, the vast majority 
of the people know that getting

[[Page S11930]]

out of this is almost as difficult as the problems the President caused 
by getting us into it.
  I know I am speaking colloquially here. I am not speaking in 
senatorial tones. But this is basic stuff.
  My two staff members sitting to my left--and I admire the devil out 
of them--have accompanied me on eight trips to Iraq. The last time 
coming home, we were all supposed to get on an aircraft, but only one 
of them did, a C-130 that was supposed to take us home. Ambassador 
Crocker asked whether I would fly to Germany with him on his way home. 
He was coming to testify. He thought it would give us a chance to talk. 
And so I did. Actually, I flew out of Iraq into Kuwait with him to 
catch a commercial flight. The C-130 cargo plane I was supposed to get 
on--we got word there were six fallen angels on that plane. Six fallen 
angels.
  That is what these tough, courageous, brave, hard Marines, Army, 
Navy, some of whom are there, et cetera, Air Force, call a dead 
American soldier whose body is coming home. They call them fallen 
angels.
  You see these guys also who you know have been shot at and shot back, 
injured and injured others--it is such an emotional phase, to hear them 
talk in hushed tones, to treat every one of those coffins that gets put 
on board the C-130--every one of which comes through my State in Dover, 
Delaware--to hear these people, these fighting men and women, treat 
every single solitary death with the reverence it deserves. The 
American people would be stunned. They would be proud. They would be 
sad and they would be concerned. So they put six fallen angels on a 
plane.
  The President of the United States a couple of days later--and I was 
there 2 weeks ago--a week ago--went on television and told the American 
people what great military progress we are making. But what he said 
was: I have no plan to end this war. I have no plan to win this war. I 
have a plan, as one of the press people said--it is not my line--he 
said: The American people are using the American forces as a cork in 
the bottle to keep the venom from spreading out beyond the borders in a 
regional war.
  I am not prepared to use my son and his generation as a cork in a 
bottle. The American people are not prepared to do that either.
  So what do we do? What do we do? Do we cut off funding? Talk about a 
hollow reed. How do you do that? How do you cut off funding for the 
166,000 troops? Even if we ordered everyone home tomorrow, they have to 
get out of that country. Do you not provide them with the mine-
resistant vehicles that can increase their life expectancy, when hit 
with a roadside bomb, by 80 percent? Do you not provide them with that? 
Do we cut that off? I don't know how you do that.
  Some things are worth losing elections over. I am not going to do 
that. So what do you do? Do you draw down troops on an orderly basis 
while you are protecting them? Yes. But where does that get you at the 
end of the day?
  The good news is they are out. There are fewer fallen angels. But the 
bad news is how many angels will fall in the next 10 years or 15 years, 
if this war metastasizes into the region. Because, ironically, the 
President's policy, which is dead wrong, has one truism about it: Chaos 
in Iraq will have regional consequences. The irony is, it is his policy 
that is causing the chaos.
  Getting back to the point of the amendment, so everybody understands 
the context in which this is being offered, it is being offered to say: 
Look, there is a way to do all of this. There is a way to reduce the 
number of fallen angels. There is a way to reduce the injuries and 
casualties. There is a way to reduce the number of deaths among the 
Iraqis. There is a way to keep this war from metastasizing. There is a 
way that we have, a last chance we have, to leave and not run the risk 
of having to send my grandson back. My grandson is a toddler.
  We have been faced in this body with two false arguments. One is more 
of the same and it will get better, and the other is leave and hope for 
the best.
  Again, I get back to the central premise to what I have been 
proposing. There is a need for a political rationale. What is the 
political rationale supposed to accomplish? It is a way--nothing is 
going to get better. We must leave, by the way. Come hell or high 
water, we must leave. But are we going to leave giving the Iraqis a 
chance that they can end up with a political agreement among 
themselves? For what purpose is the political agreement? To stop the 
civil war. That is it in a nutshell. Anybody who denies this is a 
sectarian war I think is denying reality.
  The President--as my mother would say, God love him--keeps talking 
about al-Qaida. Al-Qaida is a problem. I would argue it is a Bush-
fulfilling prophecy, al-Qaida in Iraq. But there is even in the 
military--as my good friend--and I admire the devil out of him, my 
friend from Virginia--as he points out, he knows when you go to Iraq, 
the military refers to al-Qaida of Mesopotamia; al-Qaida in Iraq. They 
are making a distinction by that, between al-Qaida in Iraq and al-Qaida 
in Afghanistan, al-Qaida in Pakistan. As I said to the President in one 
of my trips back, in a debriefing--which my friend knows we do. The 
President has us down and has his war cabinet and asks us--you know, we 
give our view.
  He was telling me about freedom being on the march. I said: With all 
due respect, Mr. President, if every single solitary jihadi in the 
world were killed tomorrow--I said if the Lord Almighty came down and 
sat at the middle of this table--we were in the Roosevelt Room--and 
looked at you and said, Mr. President, I guarantee there is not one 
single al-Qaida person living in the world, Mr. President, you still 
have a massive war on your hands. You have a massive war on your hands.
  I see my friend from Virginia is standing. I will be happy to yield 
to him.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, as I have looked back on my years here, 
one of the chapters I have enjoyed the most is the debates we have had 
together, and this is not in the nature of a debate, Mr. President, but 
I do ask the Senator who now--in your current capacity and your long 
experience in foreign relations, you probably have a better grip than 
most of us as to the likelihood--and you mentioned it--of the political 
reconciliation taking place in Iraq. I am talking about the top down, 
not the smaller, but little things that happened in Al Anbar--which are 
very positive, but I don't think you can grow political reconciliation 
all the way from the bottom up. It has to come from the top down.
  Our good friend here, Senator Levin, and I were there in Iraq a few 
weeks ago and we could not find any basis for projecting when that 
might come to pass. That is the very thing that underpins the entire 
policy we are pursuing. Because we all acknowledge a military solution 
is not there. It has to be a political reconciliation from the top 
down--albeit to get some form of unity government--maybe an adaptation 
of what the Senator is now advocating. But what is the Senator's 
projection of the likelihood of that occurring?

  Mr. BIDEN. I will be happy to respond because my friend, as usual, 
gets to the crux of the issue.
  Here is the way I look at it. I will try to break these things out. 
My friend Senator Lugar, whom I think is the most informed man in the 
Congress on foreign policy, is used to my colloquial ways of expressing 
things so he will probably understand me better than most because he 
had to deal with me for 30 years-plus. I try to devolve this, to use a 
Washington word, into sort of big chunks. You basically have two 
options here.
  No. 1, do you continue with a policy that was well intended by our 
Government, the President, the administration, of attempting to 
establish a strong central democratic government in Baghdad that in 
fact has the capacity to gain the faith and trust of the Sunni, Shia, 
and Kurds so that they will entrust to that central government their 
well-being, in terms of security, in terms of economic growth, and in 
terms of political reconciliation or do you have to reach a point that 
I have reached, and reached some time ago, of recognizing that is a 
bridge too far; that the only way in which you will be able to stop the 
warring factions from killing each other is essentially give them some 
breathing room under their federal Constitution which says--I am 
quoting from their Constitution: The Republic of Iraq is a single, 
independent, federal state.
  What I look back to, I say to my friend from Virginia, is this can't 
be

[[Page S11931]]

built up from the village up. I acknowledge the requirement that the 
leaders of the Sunnis and the Shia and the Kurds--and there are 
multiple claimants to that leadership; I know my friend knows that--
those claimants have to conclude their self-interest is better realized 
in a federal system. The Kurds have clearly recognized that. The Kurds 
made it clear when Senator Hagel and I got smuggled into Irbil, back 
before the war began, that they weren't in on any deal that wasn't a 
federal system giving them pretty significant autonomy.
  The Shia have now reached that conclusion themselves, with notable 
exceptions--Sadr being one of them. But, for example, the Vice 
President--the Shia Vice President of the, for lack of a phrase I will 
call the central government the existing government--is totally 
supportive of what I am proposing and he said so publicly and said so 
at this conference in Ramadi which I attended a few weeks ago.
  The Sunnis up to now have been the odd folks out because they look at 
it, as my friend clearly knows, and they say: Look, we live in this 
place called Anbar Province, the majority of us. We don't have much out 
here but rock and shale. There is not much else out here. All the oil 
is in the north and all the oil is in the south and if you have 
regional governments and the oil is controlled by the north and the 
south, we don't get anything.
  But here is what has happened. There is a bit of, as we Catholics 
say, an epiphany occurring. I will tell my friend in confidence who it 
is but I don't want to publicly--he is an Iraqi leader who is one of 
the leading Sunni leaders in the country, who used the following quote 
with me in the 4 hours we were together in Ramadi.
  He said--I am paraphrasing the first part--I initially disagreed with 
your plan. Now I am quoting.

       There has been a struggle I have had between my heart and 
     my head. My heart has told me up to now that we Sunnis could 
     play a major role in governing this country again, from the 
     center. My head tells me that will not happen anytime soon 
     and our fate lies in a regional system. But we need access to 
     resources.

  He said:

       But don't quote me yet, Senator, because I have to work on 
     my fellow tribal leaders out here, and others.

  Look what is happening with the Turks. The Turks initially were 
absolutely opposed to this. But as they have begun to figure it out, 
they realize that if we continue on the path we are on, American 
patience with keeping the cork in the bottle is not going to be 
sustained for the next 2 years and that when we leave, absent a 
political settlement, there will be not a splitting of Iraq into three 
parts, there will be a fracture of Iraq into multiple parts. But guess 
what they figured out. Kurdistan will become a de facto independent 
country. They will be able to say in Kurdistan: Hey, we didn't do this. 
There was nobody to deal with. And they have all of a sudden begun to 
understand that it is bad enough, from the Turkish standpoint to have a 
quasi-independent--and it is not even that--region called Kurdistan, 
within defined borders of a country called Iraq; it is a very different 
thing to have a quasi-independent Kurdistan, when you have 4 million 
Kurds sitting in their eastern mountains.
  So all of a sudden they are figuring this out. ``Figuring out'' 
sounds derogatory, and I do not mean it that way. They are looking at 
their alternatives and saying: OK, a federal system in an Iraq that is 
united is a whole lot better than a de facto independent state.
  The Iranians. The Iranians have a dilemma. The Iranians have at least 
five major militia forces among the Shia of Iraq. Some they like, some 
they do not like. As my friend from Indiana knows, you have a group 
down around Basra, as the British are pulling out, who are organized 
pretty well.
  As the British two-star said to me: They are like Mafia dons waiting 
for us to leave to see who claims the territory--who actually argued 
that Basra should be an independent country because they have access to 
the gulf, they have oil, and they have four provinces they can put 
together.
  Well, guess what. That is not very well regarded by the Badr Brigade, 
folks, and Sadr is going: Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
  So this creates a dilemma. The splintering of Iraq creates a dilemma 
for even the Iranians who do not want to do us any favors at all. The 
generic point I am making is, as time has passed, and I will use Bosnia 
as an example, when we first started off talking about what, in 
essence, became of the Dayton Peace Accords, you did not have any 
takers. And it only got to the point where you had the Croats and the 
Serbs concluding they could not dominate. They could not control 
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
  That is when they all began to think, you know, the blood and 
treasure that was--exceedingly what has happened, once they got to the 
point where they realized the gun was not going to get their solution, 
they became, very reluctantly, but they became much more acclimated to 
the notion of what the Dayton Peace Accords did.
  The bottom line is, asking me that question a year ago, I would not 
have said to you that internally the leaders among the Shia, the Kurds, 
and the Sunnis will be more inclined to accept this, but they are 
because reality has set in. The Kurds have figured out they cannot and 
do not want to be totally independent because the Turks will take them 
out.
  The Shia have figured out, generically, the leadership, that they may 
have 62 percent of the population or thereabouts and control the 
political apparatus, but they cannot stop their mosques from being 
blown up. They cannot physically control the country. And the Sunnis 
have figured out that they are not going to run the country again in 
the near term. So it is a little bit like coming face to face with the 
reality of one circumstance.
  As I said at the outset to my friend, a lot of this relates to people 
arriving at this conclusion, even in Iraq, by default. The Sunnis would 
much rather dominate the country again. The Shia would much rather keep 
the Sunnis out, as Maliki in his heart would like to do, but he cannot 
because he cannot control them.
  The Kurds would love to be independent totally but for the fact that 
they understand it may be their very demise. So reality is sinking in. 
The larger point, I say to my friend from Virginia is this: The dilemma 
I hear, and I hear it from my Democratic colleagues, I imagine I will 
hear it from some of my Republican colleagues, and it is legitimate. 
They say: Biden, we cannot force a political solution any more than we 
can force a military solution.
  Well, I would argue that it is true we have lost our credibility to 
be able to do what I believe we could have done 5 years ago or 4 years 
ago. But that is why part of this amendment calls for 
internationalizing the political solution.
  I know my friend from Indiana believes, whether it is the same 
objective, that there is an overwhelming necessity to engage major 
powers in the world, to engage regional powers so that, as he says, 
there are fora; every single day they are sitting down rubbing 
shoulders trying to figure out an accommodation.
  It cannot be done in the abstract. It cannot be done by President 
Lugar sitting in the White House dealing with Maliki sitting in 
Baghdad. It cannot be done by bringing in the regional players in Sharm 
El Sheikh, with us convening it and thinking that will get it done. It 
requires something heavier, deeper, more substantial because one of the 
things that will get people's attention, that will get the attention of 
the Sunni leaders and Shia leaders and Kurdish leaders, the 
international community led by the major five powers, is if the 
Security Council says: Hey, look, we are gathering up the team--Iran, 
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, et cetera, et cetera--and here is what we think 
your constitution says, and this is what we are prepared to support.
  What that does, that not only has implied sticks, it has significant 
carrots. Significant carrots. That organizational structure can say: 
We, from the outset, will be the guarantors that none of the regional 
powers will conclude they must be involved militarily or in a 
disruptive fashion because the truth is, what I try to do is think of 
myself as, OK, I am a real bad guy, Iranian leader who hates the United 
States.
  What benefits me the most? What benefits me the most is occupying 10 
of our 12 divisions in Iraq posing no

[[Page S11932]]

threat to them, seeing American blood and treasure spilled. But what I 
do not want to see is America, notwithstanding all of the bravado of 
Ahmadinejad, that: We will fill the vacuum; we, the Iranians, will fill 
the vacuum. That is not a vacuum they are looking to fill. If they 
could fill it, they would. But their ability to fill that vacuum is 
marginal at best. Their influence is degraded when there is continuing 
sectarian violence. It diminishes in the context of an international 
settlement.
  So the truth is, it requires the national leadership to agree on a 
regional solution. A national leadership will be unable, in the 
lifetime of any one of us on this floor, to agree to a 
central solution; a unity government from the capital city of Baghdad, 
having military and police authority over the entire country.

  Can anyone imagine the possibility, even the possibility, that you 
will see a Shia-dominated police force patrolling in Fallujah? As the 
old joke goes, raise your hand if there is a remote possibility of 
that.
  Already you cannot send into what is now Kurdistan, three 
governments, you are not even allowed to fly the Iraqi flag without 
permission. You cannot send the Iraqi Army there without their 
permission. You cannot send any national police force there without 
their permission.
  So what makes us think there is anything--let me make an analogy for 
you. When Washington accepted the surrender documents signed by 
Cornwallis at the end of our Revolutionary War, I say to my friends 
from Virginia and Massachusetts, what chance do you think there would 
have been if we had to vote within 6 months on the Constitution that 
was ratified in Philadelphia?
  Do you think Massachusetts and Virginia would be in the same country? 
I respectfully suggest, from a historical standpoint, you would not be. 
So what did we do? We did what I am proposing. You essentially set up 
Articles of Confederation.
  You said: We are going to let Massachusetts and Delaware, the first 
State, Massachusetts, and Delaware and New Jersey and Virginia, have 
considerable autonomy. There was no President. There was a Continental 
Congress, a decentralized federal system.
  It took us 13 years to get to our Philadelphia moment. Wherein does 
the arrogance emanate from that we think by putting 160,000 troops in 
Iraq, we can, over a 4-year period, in a country that was made by the 
stroke of a diplomat's pen, where France and Britain divided up the 
spoils of the Ottoman Empire, what makes us think that we can expect 
them to do something that we were unable to do? So, folks, this is 
pretty basic stuff. I know everybody knows that. I am beginning to 
sound like I am lecturing. I do not mean to do that. This is pretty 
simplistic in a sense; it is not rocket science.
  Mr. WARNER. If I can interrupt my good friend, the central issue is, 
we are losing, as you pointed out, our greatest national treasure: our 
youth, killed and wounded. How much longer? You are talking about 
indefinite periods of time. What do we do now by which to give a 
greater measure of protection to them while this process that you 
indicated is very slow can evolve, and what pressures are we going to 
put on the greater international community, the top five, to do what 
you have defined?
  Mr. BIDEN. I say to my friend: Ask. Let me give you an example. I 
will be concrete. It is like pushing an open door. I asked for a 
meeting, I say to my friend, in the tradition of Senator Lugar when he 
was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
  I asked for a meeting, a private meeting with the Permanent Five of 
the Security Council, who, as my good friend knows, is: China, Russia, 
England, France, and the United States.
  All five of those Ambassadors, including our own, Khalilzad, agreed 
to meet with me and two other members of the Foreign Relations 
Committee privately 5 weeks ago--on Monday I think it was 5 weeks ago. 
We sat in a conference room overlooking the East River for about an 
hour and a half.
  I asked the question to all five, including our Ambassador. I said: 
What would you do, gentlemen--one lady; the British Ambassador is a 
woman. I said: What would you do, gentleman and lady, if the President 
of the United States asked each of your countries to participate in 
convening an international conference on Iraq?
  One of the Ambassadors--since this was a private meeting I will not 
name him--said: Senator, I would ask your President: What took you so 
long to ask?
  Then I can refer to the French Ambassador. The French Ambassador 
pointed out that there is an inevitability of us leaving. And if, in 
fact, we leave a shattered Iraq, his country is in trouble. Remember, 
last August we were reading about automobiles being torched from 
Marseilles to Normandy. Why? Over head scarves. Between 10 and 14 
percent of the French population is Muslim. The last thing the French 
need is a radicalized, cannibalized Iraq. It went on from there.

  My point is, the President--I promise you--has not asked. He has not 
asked. I think my friend from Indiana knows, at least indirectly--
because Ambassador Khalilzad, I believe, spoke to him; he was there 
with me--there is a consensus among many in the administration to ask, 
but there is still this overwhelming reluctance that we don't need 
anybody's help; we can do it. Let me tell you, that is a vanity which 
is a burden, a significant burden.
  There are three things we should be doing immediately. And I know we 
have a disagreement on this, in my view, redefining the mission of 
Americans who are there being killed and wounded. We are not going to 
settle this civil war by remaining on the faultlines. It is not going 
to happen. Even to totally quell it, you know--as a military expert, I 
defer to you--we don't have enough troops with the surge. If you have 
500,000 troops, you could sit on the faultlines. It wouldn't solve the 
problem, but you could send it underground. But we don't. I wouldn't 
even advise it if we did because there is no underlying political 
rationale.
  My point is, redefine the mission. Were I President today, which is a 
presumptuous thing to say, I would be doing exactly what General Jones 
recommended. I would be pulling back to the borders. I would be dealing 
with force protection. I would be focusing on al-Qaida of Mesopotamia. 
I would be focusing on training Iraqi forces. I would not be focused on 
going door to door in Sunni or Shia neighborhoods in a city of 6.2 
million people. I would not have an American convoy traveling the 
streets with roadside bombs being blown up.
  The second thing we need to do, but it is not required to support 
this amendment, there is an incentive to the world, to the region, and 
to the recalcitrant leadership in Baghdad to say: Hey guys, we are 
drawing down. For the mission I just stated--and I defer to my friend--
you don't need 160,000 troops for the Jones mission, for lack of a 
better way of phrasing. You need closer to 50,000. Guess what. That is 
going to get the attention, as my friend Carl Levin has been saying for 
some time, of the Iraqis. They may have their altar call. I am not 
counting on it, but they may.
  The third thing we should be doing is, if you look at the David 
Ignatius piece in the Post today, what Senator Lugar and I and others 
and maybe my friend from Virginia have been talking about for 4 years--
we talked about it before we went in. Who is talking to the tribal 
chiefs? Who is talking to the local folks? Who is engaging them? What 
are we finding out now? Just read the Ignatius piece. All of a sudden, 
it is like, my goodness, maybe we should be talking to these guys. So 
here is the deal. When you get to this, you say: Look, here is what 
your Constitution says, and here is what you voted on in your 
Parliament to implement articles 15, 16, 17 and 18, which allows you to 
become a region, essentially a state like the United States. Write your 
own Constitution. It can't supersede the federal one. Allow you to own 
your local security.
  Why is it working in Anbar to the extent it is? It is working because 
we said: Look, we promise you, tribal leaders, nobody is going to send 
anyone from Baghdad for you. There ain't going to be any Kurds or 
Sunnis in here. You set up your own police force. Cut through all the 
diplomatic jargon. That is what we did. That is it. Guess what. Once we 
did that, the tribal sheiks whistled and said: Boys, you can join. They 
had 10,000 people show up

[[Page S11933]]

who wanted to be cops or police. Why? Because Sunnis were going to be 
guarding Sunnis.
  So this stuff about political movement is a joke. Not a joke--that is 
the wrong way to say it. It is a fiction. There is nothing unity about 
that.
  I sat next to Abdul Sattar for 2 hours, the guy who got blown up last 
Thursday, the tribal sheikh who led the insurrection against al-Qaida 
Mesopotamia, told me how safe everything was in Ramadi. They land me 
and my staff and the Senator from Arkansas in a Blackhawk helicopter 
with two Cobra gunships. We go inside the city. We are told how safe it 
is. I can walk down the street; that is true. We have a sandstorm. I 
say: No helicopters coming. Can you drive to Baghdad? No, no, no. It 
ain't that safe. Then 7 days later I get a call from a reporter from 
the Washington Post: Senator, didn't you spend a lot of time with the 
same tribal chief the President was with at the airbase? I said: Yes. 
In this safe city that he runs, with an American tank sitting in front 
of his house, with bodyguards, he got blown to smithereens.
  The generic point I am making here is the idea that somehow we are 
going to be able to negotiate these faultlines is beyond our ability. 
But it is possible, working with Sunni, Shia, Kurd, we may be able to 
augment their physical security as they make this transition.
  What did we do in Dayton? It is not precisely analogous, but it is 
analogous. There was more sectarian violence from Vlad the Impaler to 
Milosevic than in 5,000 years of history of what we now call Iraq. That 
is a fact. That is a historical fact. What did we do? As my friend from 
Indiana knows, I was deeply involved in pressuring President Clinton 
from 1993 on to take action in the Balkans. What did we finally do in 
Dayton in a bipartisan way? We called in Russia, the European powers. 
We then brought in the Serbs, Milosevic, the Croats, Tudjman--who, as 
my friend knows, was no box of chocolates--and Izetbegovic. We got them 
all in one room. We essentially locked the door. We said: Figure it 
out, folks.

  What did they figure out? Separate the parties. Even I was a little 
concerned about the Republika Srpska within Bosnia. What did we do? We 
said: Your militia can now become your police force. That is, in 
essence, what we did. We said to the Croats and the Bosnians, who were 
Muslims: You have to coexist in this other place. This place called 
Sarajevo is going to be a capital city, but it ain't going to govern 
the whole country in the way in which the capital of Washington, DC, 
has influence over the rest of America.
  Guess what. To truncate this, the West has had an average of roughly 
20,000 troops there for 10 years. What has been the result? Knock on 
wood--not one has been killed, not one has been shot dead. The ethnic 
cleansing has stopped. What are they doing now? Attempting to amend 
their Constitution to become part of Europe.
  I asked my staff to go back. I said: Tell me how the repatriation is 
going on. People are returning. Of the 2.2 million refugees in Bosnia, 
internal or external, 1.1 million have returned to their homes. Almost 
half a million have returned as minority returns, Serbs moving back 
into predominantly Croat neighborhoods, Croats moving back into 
predominantly Bosniak or Serb neighborhoods. It is painful. It takes 
time. But what did we do? We got them all in a room, figuratively 
speaking.
  We have to get them in a room, Senator Lugar. We have to get them in 
a room. Because let me tell you something, some in the administration 
privately say to me: Joe, you are right. There is an inevitability to a 
federal system. The difference between an inevitability and us being 
the catalyst to bring it about may be years. That is thousands of 
deaths, maybe tens of thousands, counting Iraqis and American. We don't 
have that time. And look, I don't want to criticize the President. I 
don't. God love him, I don't care whether he gets credit or blame at 
this point. But let me tell you one thing for certain: What 
Presidential leadership is about is a change in the dynamic of 
situations that are admittedly out of control. It requires taking 
risks. Thus far, the only risk we have taken is the lives of our 
troops. We have taken virtually no diplomatic risks.
  I say to my friends, there is a reason why, although what I am 
proposing here is not ideal, I think there is a reason why so many 
people--left, right and center--have come to this conclusion. One thing 
about us Americans is, we have ultimately led the world as a 
consequence of two traits we possess, in my opinion, that exceed that 
of any other country. It is not just our military power; it is our 
idealism coupled with our pragmatism. It gets down to a very pragmatic 
question: If you don't like Biden et al.'s political solution, what is 
yours? What is yours?
  The world is waiting. They are literally waiting. No one has the 
capacity, no group of nations has the capacity, absent our active 
cooperation and engagement, to do anything to better the situation. We 
do. The potential power is in our hands. But I respectfully suggest 
that we can't do it by ourselves. We have lost the credibility to do 
that, rightly or wrongly.
  So it takes me to the essence of this amendment. The amendment simply 
says--and I will not take the time to read it; I know other people wish 
to speak. I might add, this is the first and only time in the last 3 
months I have spoken on the floor. I apologize for the time, but I 
think it is the single most critical issue we face. I know my friends 
think that too.
  Regardless of your political persuasion, how do you attend to the 
agenda each of us has, from the right or the left, to deal with the 
social ills and concerns of America until we end this war? We are going 
to spend, counting it all, $120 billion a year. How do you deal with 
that--the Republican approach to dealing with generating economic 
growth or the Democratic approach? How do you deal with tax structure 
and tax policy? How do you do this?
  Look, it is the ultimate preoccupation, with good reason, of the 
American people. Again, I know no one more loyal or knowledgable about 
the U.S. Armed Forces whom I have served with in the Senate than my 
friend from Virginia. He knows there is only one group of Americans 
making a sacrifice now--it is the thousands of families, thousands, 
166,000 families. It is those families. They are the only ones. But 
guess what. It is against the Senate rules to refer to the Gallery by 
pointing to them. But I will refer to previous Galleries. Everyone who 
sits in this Gallery, they get it. They get it, whether they have a 
child, son, daughter, husband or wife there.

  (Ms. KLOBUCHAR assumed the Chair.)
  Mr. BIDEN. So folks, I must tell you, I am getting frustrated with 
all the tactical--not strategic--suggestions that have been made with 
how to deal with this war. Because if you put together a basic 
syllogism, the basic premise is what? There is no military solution; 
only a political solution.
  So what yields that political solution? Can I guarantee the Senator 
from Minnesota, the Presiding Officer, that my solution will work? No. 
But I can guarantee--I will rest my career on what I am about to say--
that there is no other political solution being proffered that has 
any--period; not one ``being offered''--and none of the tactical 
solutions offered will, in fact, solve this problem, none.
  I know you are all afraid. I know everybody who is running is afraid 
to sign onto a specific proposal. ``Afraid'' is the wrong word--
reluctant. Because then you become the target. You become the target. 
You offer a specific alternative, and it is easy to focus on whether 
your solution can work. If it is tried and failed, then you made a 
mistake. As the old saying goes: What do they pay us the big bucks for? 
Why are we here? Why are we here?
  Let's stop pussyfooting around. Either vote for this political 
solution or offer another one or say you think there is a military 
solution or say you think it is totally hopeless, there is no 
resolution. Let's leave and hope for the best. But don't tell me you 
have a plan if it does not fall in one of those four categories. Don't 
tell me. That is disingenuous.
  So, again, can I guarantee this will work? No. Every single day that 
goes by, absent an attempt to implement what I am proposing, or 
something similar to it, without it being attempted, makes it harder. 
Look, it is not often that Thomas Friedman, David Brooks, Charles 
Krauthammer, Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Les Gelb--I will go 
down the list--

[[Page S11934]]

agree on the same principle about the most fundamental, immediate 
foreign policy issue facing the United States of America.
  I am open--I have no pride of authorship--I am open to amending, 
tweaking, changing, but I will end where I begin. The central, 
fundamental, animating principle of this concurrent resolution is: Iraq 
will not be governed from the center anytime soon, and I am not 
prepared for my son and his generation to continue to shed their blood 
in an effort to do that. I will not do that.
  As we leave--and we will leave, as my friend from Virginia knows--as 
we leave, the only honest question that any President or Senator must 
ask himself or herself is: Do we have any ability to affect what we 
leave behind? If we do, we have a moral overriding, overarching 
obligation to the next generation to try to do it.
  Because let me tell you something, I am out there, as the old saying 
goes, on the trail. The easiest thing to say is: I wash my hands, man. 
Out. It is--let me choose my words correctly--it is not an answer. It 
is not an answer. It is not an honest answer.
  So I ask unanimous consent that recent supporting ideas relating to 
federalism--whether or not they use the Biden language--be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 Recent Support for Federalism in Iraq

       The Kurdish autonomous zone should be our model for Iraq. 
     Does George Bush or Condi Rice have a better idea? Do they 
     have any idea? Right now, we're surging aimlessly. Iraq's 
     only hope is radical federalism--with Sunnis, Shiites and 
     Kurds each running their own affairs, and Baghdad serving as 
     an ATM, dispensing cash for all three. Let's get that on the 
     table--now.--Thomas Friedman, New York Times, August 29, 2007
       Most American experts and policy makers wasted the past few 
     years assuming that change in Iraq would come from the center 
     and spread outward. They squandered months arguing about the 
     benchmarks that would supposedly induce the Baghdad 
     politicians to make compromises. They quibbled over whether 
     this or that prime minister was up to the job. They 
     unrealistically imagined that peace would come through some 
     grand Sunni-Shiite reconciliation.
       Now, at long last, the smartest analysts and policy makers 
     are starting to think like sociologists. They are finally 
     acknowledging that the key Iraqi figures are not in the 
     center but in the provinces and the tribes. Peace will come 
     to the center last, not to the center first. Stability will 
     come not through some grand reconciliation but through the 
     agglomeration of order, tribe by tribe and street by street.
       The big change in the debate has come about because the 
     surge failed, and it failed in an unexpected way. The 
     original idea behind the surge was that U.S. troops would 
     create enough calm to allow the national politicians to make 
     compromises. The surge was intended to bolster the 
     ``modern''--meaning nonsectarian and nontribal--institutions 
     in the country. But the surge is failing, at least 
     politically, because there are practically no nonsectarian 
     institutions, and there are few nonsectarian leaders to 
     create them. Security gains have not led to political 
     gains.--David Brooks, New York Times, September 4, 2007
       A weak, partitioned Iraq is not the best outcome. We had 
     hoped for much more. Our original objective was a democratic 
     and unified post-Hussein Iraq. But it has turned out to be a 
     bridge too far. We tried to give the Iraqis a republic, but 
     their leaders turned out to be, tragically, too driven by 
     sectarian sentiment, by an absence of national identity, and 
     by the habits of suspicion and maneuver cultivated during 
     decades in the underground of Saddam Hussein's totalitarian 
     state. . . .
       We now have to look for the second-best outcome. A 
     democratic, unified Iraq might someday emerge. Perhaps 
     today's ground-up reconciliation in the provinces will 
     translate into tomorrow's ground-up national reconciliation. 
     Possible, but highly doubtful. What is far more certain is 
     what we are getting: ground-up partition.--Charles 
     Krauthammer, Washington Post, September 7, 2007
       It is possible that the present structure in Baghdad is 
     incapable of national reconciliation because its elected 
     constituents were elected on a sectarian basis. A wiser 
     course would be to concentrate on the three principal regions 
     and promote technocratic, efficient and humane administration 
     in each. The provision of services and personal security 
     coupled with emphasis on economic, scientific and 
     intellectual development may represent the best hope for 
     fostering a sense of community. More efficient regional 
     government leading to substantial decrease in the level of 
     violence, to progress towards the rule of law and to 
     functioning markets could then, over a period of time, give 
     the Iraqi people an opportunity for national reconciliation--
     especially if no region is strong enough to impose its will 
     on the others by force. Failing that, the country may well 
     drift into de facto partition under the label of autonomy, 
     such as already exists in the Kurdish region.--Henry 
     Kissinger, Washington Post, September 16, 2007

  Mr. BIDEN. I would assert I am confident there are some major players 
in this administration who agree with the tact I am taking, and I would 
invite--that is not why he is on the floor, I know--I would invite any 
advice or suggestions--not at this moment--from my friend from Indiana 
or my friend from Virginia as to how to deal with this.
  But, ladies and gentlemen, it took us--it took us--13 years to get to 
our Philadelphia moment. It is going to take the Iraqis a lot longer. I 
do not want to see a regional war in the meantime because every one of 
us knows, whether we are here 3 years from now, there will not be 
133,000 troops in Iraq. That will not be the case no matter who is 
President. The American people will not stand for it, and we will 
respond.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I, for one, will accept the challenge to 
carefully go back and look at the Senator's amendment and the 
foundation documents which he has described, and I look forward to 
Monday and Tuesday, perhaps, reengaging the Senator.
  I say to the Senator, I think it is a very heartfelt expression of 
your own views that you have shared with us this morning. I think it is 
a constructive contribution to this debate.
  Mr. BIDEN. Madam President, I thank my friend and I appreciate his 
kind remarks.
  Madam President, I also ask unanimous consent that the article in 
Thursday's Washington Post, dated September 20, by David Ignatius, 
entitled ``Shaky Allies in Anbar'' be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                         Shaky Allies in Anbar

                          (By David Ignatius)

       The Bush administration has been so enthusiastic in touting 
     its new alliance with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province 
     that it's easy to overlook two basic questions: Why did it 
     take so long to reach an accommodation with the Sunnis? And 
     is Anbar really a good model for stabilizing the rest of 
     Iraq?
       First, the what-took-so-long issue: The fact is, Sunni 
     tribal leaders have been queuing up for four years to try to 
     make the kind of alliances that have finally taken root in 
     Anbar. For most of that time, these overtures were rebuffed 
     by U.S. officials who, not inaccurately, regarded the Sunni 
     sheiks as local warlords.
       This disdain for potential allies was a mistake, but so is 
     the recent sugarcoating of the tribal leaders. They are tough 
     Bedouin chiefs, sometimes litt1e more than smugglers and 
     gangsters. The United States should make tactical alliances 
     with them, but we shouldn't have stars in our eyes. The 
     tendency to overidealize our allies has been a consistent 
     mistake.
       Like other journalists who follow Iraq, I began talking 
     with Sunni tribal leaders in 2003. Most of the meetings were 
     in Amman, Jordan, arranged with help from former Jordanian 
     government officials who had perfected the art of paying the 
     sheiks. One contact was a member of the Kharbit clan, which 
     had long maintained friendly (albeit secret) relations with 
     the Jordanians and the Americans. The Kharbits were eager for 
     an alliance, even after a U.S. bombing raid killed one of 
     their leaders, Malik Kharbit, in April 2003. But U.S. 
     officials were disdainful.
       During a visit to Fallujah in September 2003, I met an 
     aging leader of the Bu Issa Tribe named Sheik Khamis. He 
     didn't want secret American payoffs--they would get him 
     killed, he said. He wanted money to rebuild schools and roads 
     and to provide jobs for members of his tribe. U.S. officials 
     made fitful efforts to help but nothing serious enough to 
     check the insurgency in Fallujah. Back then, you recall, the 
     Bush administration was playing down any talk of an 
     insurgency.
       A Sunni tribal leader who pushed bravely for an alliance 
     with the Americans was Talal al-Gaaod, a leader of one of the 
     branches of the Dulaim tribe. Looking back through my notes, 
     I can reconstruct a series of his efforts that were 
     mishandled by senior U.S. officials: In August 2004, he 
     helped arrange a meeting in Amman between Marine commanders 
     from Anbar and tribal leaders there who wanted to assemble a 
     local militia. Senior U.S. officials learned of the 
     unauthorized dialogue and shut it down.
       Gaaod tried again in November 2004, organizing a tribal 
     summit in Amman with the blessing of the Jordanian 
     government. Again, the official U.S. response was chilly; the 
     U.S. military launched its second assau1t on Fallujah that 
     month, and the summit had to be canceled. In the spring of 
     2005, the tireless Gaaod began framing plans for what he

[[Page S11935]]

     called a ``Desert Protection Force,'' a kind of tribal 
     militia that would fight al-Qaeda in Anbar. The proposal was 
     gutted by U.S. officials in Baghdad who derided it as 
     ``warlordism.''
       A despondent Gaaod e-mailed me in July 2005: ``Believe me, 
     there is no need to waste anymore one penny of the American 
     taxpayers' money and no more one drop of blood of the 
     American boys.'' His despair roused the new American 
     ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, who began meeting 
     with Gaaod and other Iraqi Sunnis in Amman in hopes of 
     brokering a deal with the insurgents. Gaaod died of heart 
     failure in March 2006.
       What fina1ly happened in Anbar was that Sunni tribal 
     leaders--tough guys who have guns and know how to use them--
     began standing up to the al-Qaeda thugs who were marrying 
     their women and blocking their smuggling routes. The initial 
     American response in mid-2006, I'm told, was ho-hum. More 
     warlords. But Green Zone officials began to realize this was 
     the real deal, and a virtuous cycle began. The tragedy is 
     that it could have happened much earlier.
       The American plan now, apparently, is to extend the Anbar 
     model and create ``bottom-up'' solutions throughout Iraq. For 
     example, I'm told that U.S. commanders met recently with the 
     Shiite political organization known as the Supreme Islamic 
     Iraqi Council and gave a green light for its Badr 
     Organization militia to control security in Nasiriyah and 
     some other areas in southern Iraq and thereby check the power 
     of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. We're interposing ourselves 
     here in an intra-Shiite battle we barely understand.
       These local deals may make sense as short-term methods for 
     stabilizing the country. But we shouldn't confuse these 
     tactical alliances with nation-building. Over time, they will 
     break Iraq apart rather than pull it together. Work with 
     tribal and militia leaders, but don't forget who they are.

  Mr. BIDEN. Madam President, I yield the floor and thank my 
colleagues.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Madam President, expectations were high on Capitol 
Hill and the rest of the Nation this month.
  We were all hoping to hear a major new strategy on how to forge 
political accommodation in Iraq from General Petraeus and Ambassador 
Crocker, and most importantly from President Bush.
  We did hear of some limited, tactical success in improving security, 
but we learned nothing new on how the Bush administration would bridge 
the yawning political gap between Shia and Sunni.
  In fact, the President in his speech last week to the Nation offered 
no change in policy and no strategy for reaching the political 
accommodation that is necessary in Iraq.
  In his eighth prime-time address on Iraq, the President again made 
the case that his policy will bring success in Iraq.
  We have heard ``mission accomplished,'' we have heard calls for 
patience, and innumerable claims that we are winning. We have heard 
that more troops will lead to political progress.
  We have heard that ``when they stand up, we stand down,'' but there 
is no clear plan to get them to stand on their own.
  And, this time we received yet another slogan--``Return on Success'' 
a new name for staying the course, keeping the status quo.
  So, even though for months we have been told by the White House and 
many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to wait until 
September for a new strategy, we are still told to wait--again--but for 
what?
  Neither General Petraeus nor Ambassador Crocker could provide answers 
to how long a U.S. troop presence will be in Iraq. As Ambassador 
Crocker said, ``No timelines, dates, or guarantees.'' Yet we are told 
to embrace their recommendations and continue more of the same.
  This will do nothing to force Prime Minister Maliki to take the 
necessary actions to bring political stability to that nation.
  Sadly, we are left with no conclusion but this--the upcoming year 
will result in little change in the political stalemate that marks 
Iraq's Government today.
  This, I believe, is a missed opportunity for telling the American 
people how political progress would be made in Iraq, for describing how 
and when the vast majority of our troops would come home, and for 
charting a new strategy and finding a way out of Iraq.
  No, this President and his military and political advisors seemed 
determined to keep a high level of U.S. forces in Iraq for the 
foreseeable future.
  It was clear from the President's speech that he fully intends to 
maintain his failed Iraq policy through the end of his administration 
and then lay the problem at the feet of his successor.
  The President would also like to take credit for drawing down our 
troops when the reality is that he is willing to go no further than 
presurge levels through next July. The same troop levels in Iraq 10 
months from now as we had 10 months ago. This is not change; this is 
not a plan.
  In fact, this was always the expectation, because simply put, the 
Army is on the verge of breaking. Troop rotation limitations make it 
imperative that we draw down troop levels by this April to avoid 
extending our soldiers' 15-month tours further.
  Only a token contingent--about 5,000--will come home by the end of 
this year.
  Clearly, a choice has been made by this White House to leave the 
difficult decisions to the next administration; that is, unless 
Congress acts. So Congress, once again, has an opportunity, an 
opportunity to do what this administration will not--to bring about 
major reductions in troops, and to begin the process of bringing our 
troops home.
  I hope Democrats and Republicans can find common ground in the coming 
weeks to transition the mission and remove our troops from the midst of 
a civil war that only the Iraqis can solve.
  We must forge a bipartisan plan to move our troops out of Iraq.
  That is what the American people want.
  Improvements in security are welcome, but by themselves, they do 
nothing to answer the difficult questions facing the nation. I do not 
doubt that the surge has had a positive effect on security.
  When you add 30,000 U.S. forces into a region, you are going to have 
an impact on the area. I would be surprised if it were otherwise.
  And it is clear that there have been improvements in security in Al 
Anbar province. Sunni sheiks are working with U.S. forces against 
brutal foreign fighters. But we must also acknowledge that many of 
these improvements started to take place before the surge even began. 
And levels of violence in other areas of Iraq have receded from the 
December 2006 peak. Yet, these levels of violence, it should be noted, 
still remain high compared with 2004 and 2005 levels.
  Every recent report admits that the security progress has been 
uneven. In fact, the latest Pentagon Quarterly assessment released just 
this week points out that even as Iraqi civilian deaths fell to their 
lowest level in 5 months in June, attacks against coalition forces 
reached record levels that same month.
  Civilian casualties, in fact, rose again in July, and a telling chart 
in that Pentagon report shows the average daily casualties in Iraq--
including coalition forces, civilians, and Iraqi security forces--
increasing to about 150 per day in July and August.
  Moreover, we face a growing humanitarian crisis in Iraq as the number 
of displaced Iraqis is increasing by 80,000 to 100,000 a month. To 
date, at least 2.2 million Iraqis have fled their country, and another 
2 million have been forced to leave their homes to escape the sectarian 
violence.
  There continue to be IED explosions, suicide bombings, sectarian 
killings on a daily basis.
  So violence continues, even if by some measures there have been 
indications of a decline in the last several weeks.
  But the point is this--the surge is not an end in itself. It is not a 
strategy. It is a tactic to achieve a purpose.
  The purpose of the surge was meant to give politicians the breathing 
space needed to make the tough choices necessary to forge a stable 
government.
  Yet, according to independent analysis, there has been little 
progress in meeting the key benchmarks.
  The Iraqi Government has met only 3 of 18 benchmarks--not including 
major political action on an oil law, constitutional reform, and 
debaathification.
  These benchmarks, by the way, were commitments made by the Iraqi 
Government itself, not the U.S. Congress. They were put forward to the 
Nation by President Bush in January as critical indicators of political 
progress in Iraq that would come about as part of the surge. Yet, this 
did not happen.
  And recent reports all raise stark doubts about the likelihood that 
we

[[Page S11936]]

will see any significant political progress on the part of the Iraqi 
government in the coming months.
  Even Ambassador Crocker showed deep pessimism that meeting these 
benchmarks and achieving major political progress would be possible in 
the next month or year.
  He said, ``I frankly do not expect us to see rapid progress through 
these benchmarks'' and suggested that progress would take months if not 
years to achieve.
  So the American people are being asked for more patience at a time 
when it is clear that we do not have a strategy in place to remedy the 
situation in the immediate future.
  While this administration continues to endorse an open-ended 
commitment of our presence in Iraq, our brave service men and women are 
caught in the middle of a situation that everyone agrees can only be 
resolved with a political solution. This is deeply troubling to me. Our 
nation has been in Iraq for 4\1/2\ years. We have spent $450 billion 
and the President will soon ask us for $200 billion more.
  We have lost nearly 3,800 American troops, over 400 from my home 
State of California. Almost 28,000 have been injured in Iraq.
  We entered the country thinking that we would be met as liberators, 
and had no contingency plans in place if we were not.
  The borders weren't secured, leading to an inflow of foreign 
fighters.
  Debaathification was put in place on all levels of civil society, 
leading to resentment and widespread unemployment.
  The army was disbanded, creating a disaffected, trained insurgency.
  The munitions dumps weren't secured, essentially arming the 
insurgency.
  There has never been a clear-eyed strategy to resolve the major 
difference between Shia and Sunni.
  In a case of truly open candor, General Petraeus even admitted that 
he did not know if the U.S. presence in Iraq had made America 
``safer.''
  And now the American people are being asked for more of the same.
  More time, more patience, more of our blood and treasure--all without 
a strategy. I cannot support this view.
  I have said for a long time now that I believe that we should 
transition the mission in Iraq and begin to move our troops home. I am 
more convinced of that today.
  Our forces only buttress the Maliki government and shield them from 
making the tough decisions.
  If our President will not hold the Iraqis accountable, then Congress 
must.
  Bush's plan means a large number of American troops in Iraq for years 
to come--an undefined commitment to Iraq.
  Is it right to ask for a commitment from our troops when the Iraqis 
won't commit themselves? Clearly no.
  So I believe that Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle 
should come together in support of a plan to start bringing our troops 
home. They should not be in the middle of an ethno-sectarian civil war.
  We need an answer to the one question which General Petraeus famously 
asked as commander of the 101st Airborne in Iraq in 2003, ``Tell me how 
this ends.''
  Mr. DODD. Madam President, I wanted to take a moment to explain why I 
voted against the Levin-Reed amendment on Iraq.
  Let me say at the outset that I am second to none in this body in my 
opposition to the President's failed policy in Iraq. Yesterday I spoke 
in strong support and voted for the Feingold-Reid amendment that would 
have set forth a clear and enforceable deadline for ending our military 
involvement in the unwinnable civil war in Iraq. Sadly, only 27 of our 
colleagues joined with me in voting for the Feingold-Reid amendment.
  I do not doubt the sincerity of Senators Levin and Reed in offering 
their amendment. These have been two articulate voices in the Senate 
calling for a change in our policy in Iraq for some time now. They like 
many of our colleagues have spoken out strongly about the failure of 
the President's policy and highlighted the fact that this policy has 
made our Nation less safe and has broken our military. But I believe 
this President will not admit failure or change policy unless we force 
him to, and the only effective instrument available to this Congress to 
do so is to exercise its power of the purse and cut off funding for 
this war, once our men and women in uniform have been safely withdrawn 
from Iraq. That is what the Feingold amendment would have accomplished, 
and that is what any amendment that I will vote for henceforth must do.
  We all know this President doesn't understand subtlety. He has 
demonstrated time and time again that he doesn't respect this Congress 
or even the law. How many signing statements has this President issued 
in which he outlines ways to ignore or circumvent the laws written by 
this Congress? Too many. How many innocent Americans have been subject 
to illegal, warrantless wiretaps authorized by this President? Too 
many. How many falsehoods and deceits have been perpetrated by this 
President to justify his disastrous war of choice in Iraq? Too many.
  There is only one way to force this President to change course in 
Iraq and that is to take away the money required for him to conduct 
that war. Iraqi officials need to be convinced as well that we truly 
mean it when we say it is time for them to take responsibility for 
their country and not count on us indefinitely to fight their fight for 
them.
  If we are truly being honest with the American people when we say we 
are fighting to end this failed policy, we must do everything possible 
to do so. That is why while I respect the efforts of my colleagues 
Senators Levin and Reed, I felt compelled to vote against their 
amendment.
  I hope the next time this body debates the war in Iraq, many more of 
our colleagues will join with Senator Feingold and me in voting for a 
clear and enforceable deadline to end our military involvement in Iraq 
and set on a new course that makes our Nation more secure and allows 
our broken military to begin to rebuild.
  Too many days have passed and too many lives have been lost while 
this Congress has stood by and not acted. That must end.
  Mr. AKAKA. Madam President, yesterday I offered, along with my 
colleague Senator Webb, an amendment to the National Defense 
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 that would require the Secretary 
of the Army and the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to prepare a report 
on plans to replace the monument at the Tomb of the Unknowns at 
Arlington National Cemetery.
  Our amendment seeks to clarify the plans of the Secretaries to 
replace the monument at the Tomb of the Unknown due to cosmetic cracks 
that have appeared over time in the facing of the monument. It would 
require the Secretaries to provide Congress with a description of the 
current efforts to maintain and preserve the monument and an assessment 
of the feasibility and advisability of repairing rather then replacing 
it. The Secretaries would also be required to report on their plans to 
replace the monument and, if replaced, how they intend to dispose of 
the current monument. Our amendment would prevent the Secretaries from 
taking action to replace the monument until 180 days after the receipt 
of the report.
  The Army contends that the cracks in the monument diminish the 
aesthetic value of the monument and that the cracks justify the 
monument's replacement. The Army's position is that the cracks in the 
monument cannot be fixed and that it will continue to deteriorate. The 
Army also contends that the surface of the monument has weathered to 
the point that, within the next 15 years, the details of the carving 
are expected to be eroded to the extent that the experience of visiting 
the tomb will be adversely effected. They justify its replacement by 
asserting that the Tomb of the Unknowns has significance beyond it 
historic origins and therefore should be maintained in as perfect of a 
state as possible.
  This position is not shared by many civic and preservation groups who 
believe the monument can and should be preserved and repaired. This 
view is also shared by the preservation architects who completed the 
last formal study of repairs to the Tomb of the Unknowns in 1990. 
Supporters of preserving the current monument view it

[[Page S11937]]

as something that cannot be replicated. They do not believe the 
experience of visitors will be diminished by the weathering and 
deterioration that come over time. They believe it is a symbol that 
should be considered in the same vein as other imperfect symbols of our 
heritage such as the Liberty Bell and the Star Spangled Banner, the 
flag that inspired our national anthem.
  It is important to note that the Capitol Building and the White House 
are other well-known and well-loved American icons that have developed 
cracks and other flaws in their building materials, but no one is 
suggesting that they be torn down and replaced with replicas.
  It is also important that, as we consider replacing the monument at 
the Tomb of the Unknowns, we acknowledge that it is the stated position 
of our Government under Executive Order 13287, signed by President Bush 
on March 3, 2003, that the Federal Government will provide leadership 
in the preservation of America's heritage.
  Our amendment does not preclude the Secretaries from replacing the 
monument at the Tomb of the Unknowns in the future, but seeks to ensure 
that we move with great caution before making any decisions that would 
irrevocably affect this national treasure. I urge all of my colleagues 
to support this amendment.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I believe our colleague from Indiana, 
under the UC, has now some 30 minutes; is that correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I see our colleague from Massachusetts. 
Does he wish to put a formal request before the Chair with regard to 
his desire to address the Senate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The order is to recognize the Senator from 
Massachusetts following the Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Virginia. I 
see the Senator from Indiana on his feet, as well as my friend and 
colleague from Wyoming. I know the Senator from Indiana is eager to 
continue the discussion on the substance that has been raised this 
morning. I was wondering if we might have a very brief period of time, 
Senator Enzi and myself, to describe an extremely important piece of 
legislation that passed last evening, on a voice vote. It is very 
important in terms of the health of the country. We want to be able to 
speak briefly on that issue.
  I am wondering if the Senator from Indiana would yield 5 minutes to 
the Senator from Wyoming and myself.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, first, we would want to consult before 
that UC is given----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. An order already exists.
  Mr. WARNER. With the Senator from Indiana, who I think has been 
waiting about an hour and a half.
  Mr. LUGAR. Madam President, I thank the distinguished Senator from 
Virginia for raising the question. As a courtesy to my distinguished 
colleagues, I will be pleased to yield for the time requirements they 
have and then I will proceed after they have concluded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I thank the Chair's inviting comment. 
Let us make it clear that I believe the UC, as structured, would be the 
Senator from Massachusetts will have 5 minutes, the Senator from 
Wyoming will have 5 minutes, and then the 30 minutes allocated to the 
Senator from Indiana will start.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is the Chair's understanding.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. First of all, Madam President, I thank my friend from 
Indiana, who is so typically gracious and understanding to his 
colleagues. We will be very brief. If the matter was not of such 
importance, we would not trespass on the Senator's time.
  Madam President, I ask the Chair to let me know when I have 1 minute 
left.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. I will, Senator.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Chair.

                          ____________________