[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 146 (Friday, September 28, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12327-S12330]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION

  Mr. LEVIN. I, again, thank Senator Salazar.
  Mr. WARNER. If I might ask my colleague, I think it is the intention 
of the leadership that this bill--I believe it is in the order--will be 
brought up again on Monday, with the hope and expectation that we will 
complete the bill during the course of business on Monday.
  Mr. LEVIN. The Senator is correct. I think the unanimous consent 
agreement actually provides that all votes remaining on this bill begin 
at approximately 5:30. That is the expectation. And we again thank 
everybody who was involved in working out that unanimous consent.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after Senator Salazar is 
recognized, Senator Akaka be recognized at that point for his remarks 
in morning business.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, if I might add, earlier I had the 
opportunity, as did the chairman, to speak to Senator Akaka. Admiral 
Roughead served with great distinction in an assignment in Hawaii and 
is personally known to the distinguished Senator from Hawaii, Mr. 
Akaka.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Colorado is 
recognized for 10 minutes.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor this morning to speak 
about the Department of Defense authorization bill, which is a very 
good bill that has been put together with the leadership of my good 
friend, Senator Levin and Senator Warner, Senator McCain, and others, 
who have been involved in this legislation. I come to the floor to 
speak in support of this legislation, and I am certain when we get to 
Monday we will have a resounding adoption of this bill, which is so 
important to our men and women in uniform across the globe.
  I will be supporting this legislation, but what will be missing from 
this legislation is legislation that crafts a new way forward in Iraq, 
a way forward that transitions our mission from one of combat, policing 
a sectarian civil war, to one which is a limited mission that I believe 
both Democrats and Republicans believe we should be able to attain in 
Iraq.
  It is in that context that I was proud to have been one of the 
participants in crafting the legislation that would have implemented 
the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. I thank the 17 cosponsors 
of that legislation for trying to help this body find a way out of the 
wilderness of Iraq and move forward with a bipartisan approach that 
would unite our Nation behind an effort that we ultimately agree must 
result in bringing our troops home from Iraq and maximizing the 
possibility for us to bring about some level of security in Iraq and 
defend the strategic interests of the United States in that region and 
around the world.
  But it wasn't only the 17 sponsors we had on the legislation which 
Senator Alexander and I crafted with the Iraq Study Group, there were 
also other efforts that were underway in this Chamber during the last 
week to try to figure out whether there was a common way forward. 
Senator Levin, Senator Voinovich, Senator Nelson, Senator Collins, and 
others were very involved in that effort, and it is not over. My hope 
is that as we move forward in debating what is the foreign policy and 
national security issue of our time that there may be a way in which we 
can unite the country in a common way forward.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, I want to 
commend the Senator for the leadership he has taken in this area. I had 
the opportunity to work with the Senator. As a matter of fact, one of 
the amendments we jointly worked on eventually became law in the 
appropriations cycle that required Ambassador Crocker to come before 
the Senate, General Petraeus to come before the Senate, and the 
President to make a report to the Nation.
  We also created the Jones Commission. All of these matters had the 
Senator's support all along, and I wish to

[[Page S12328]]

say that the Senator has been absolutely tireless in his efforts to try 
to help the Senate do the necessary oversight on this situation.
  While we have not, in this current legislation, specific things--the 
Senator from Michigan brought up an amendment which failed. It should 
not be looked at as a failure. The Senate is doing oversight. The 
Senate will continue every single day to give oversight on this 
situation. But we also have to be respectful to the Constitution, which 
delegates very carefully the responsibilities of the legislative 
branch, i.e. the Senate and the House of Representatives, and that of 
the President in his role as Commander in Chief, where specifically it 
is entrusted to the President to decide the strategy and the mission, 
and the Senate and the House are primarily responsible for the 
authorization and appropriation of funds.
  But it does not relieve in any way the obligation of this body to 
watch what is taking place in Iraq, to give our best thought and 
counsel to the executive branch--namely, the President--to try to bring 
about an achievement of the basic goals of a free and sovereign and 
stable Iraq, which hopefully someday can join the other nations of the 
world, particularly as it relates to the ongoing war with those who are 
termed ``terrorists,'' for lack of a better term, who are challenging 
our respective countries, whether it is the United States or other 
nations in the world.
  So I just wanted to thank the Senator for his leadership. Senator 
Salazar has done a marvelous job.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I thank my good friend from Virginia, and 
I will always remember my very first trip into that war-torn country of 
Iraq was a trip that was led by Senator Warner and Senator Levin. It 
was the Levin-Warner codel that went into Iraq to try to learn more 
about what was happening in that country, to figure out a way in which 
we might be able to move forward.
  The Senator from Virginia is correct. I think the debate in this 
Chamber and in this country has been helpful to bring about a better 
understanding and to deliver a message to the Iraqi people that we do 
not have an open-ended commitment. I was proud to have been a part of 
supporting the Senator from Virginia as we moved forward with 
the legislation that included the benchmarks that are now part of our 
national policy and that also required the General Accounting Office to 
report on those benchmarks and created the Jones Commission to give us 
an independent assessment of the security situation on the ground. So I 
think there has been progress that has been made.

  But I would also respond to my good friend from Virginia, for whom I 
have the greatest amount of respect, that it is important this debate 
be one which we continue to have because it is the central foreign 
policy and national security issue of our time. Even though we all 
understand we live under a constitution which has divided the powers 
between three branches of Government, we all know from the 
jurisprudence of our past that the power of the President is, frankly, 
at its highest when, in fact, there is a relationship where he and the 
Congress agree on a way forward.
  What we have seen over the last several years is a great division in 
this country in terms of where many of the members of the legislative 
branch of our Government is and where the President is. So I think our 
continuing efforts to try to find a way forward in a way that the 
Senator from Michigan, Mr. Levin, and others have been trying to do is 
something we should continue to do. I do not believe it is something 
that at this point in time we should give up on because this issue is 
too important. It is too important for the 170,000 men and women 
currently serving in Iraq. It is too important to their families in the 
United States. It is too important to the fiscal consequence this war 
is bringing upon the United States.
  So I am hopeful the dialogue that has taken place in the Senate over 
the last week with different groups of Senators trying to find a common 
way forward ultimately will get us to success.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I assure my colleague that I fully 
anticipate we will have further debates on the very issues that have 
been of concern to my colleague from Colorado during the Defense 
appropriations bill, which we will be following up with at the 
conclusion of work on this bill.
  But I point out that it has not all been lost. I will give the 
Senator specific examples. A number of us have indicated a desire to 
have some of our troops brought home as early as possible, and the 
President initiated, after testimony by General Petraeus, the steps to 
start bringing our troops home, some elements of them, before 
Christmas. He laid out a program for reduction in forces with an 
objective to be at what we call a presurge force level by late next 
spring or very early next summer. So the voices in this Chamber are 
being heard.
  I know personally that the President is quite anxious, more so than 
most, to bring our forces home, but only after achievement of the goals 
for which heavy sacrifices have been made. We are now crossing 3,800 
who have been lost and many others wounded. We must be certain that 
great sacrifice was not in vain.
  I thank the Chair, and I thank my colleague.
  Mr. LEVIN. Will the Senator yield for a quick reaction?
  Mr. SALAZAR. Absolutely.
  Mr. LEVIN. There has been no one in this Chamber who has worked 
harder to try to bring enough Senators together to pass a resolution 
calling for a change of course in Iraq than Senator Salazar. He has 
been absolutely intrepid. There is not a day that goes by when he is 
not working with colleagues looking for a path forward where we can 
accomplish a change in course, where we could not only begin the 
transition to a new mission--which is out of a civil war, out of the 
middle of this sectarian conflict--but also where there is, at a 
minimum, a goal set for the completion of that transition to those more 
limited ambitions which would be supportive of Iraq, supportive of 
their army, but part of a change of policy which would force the Iraqis 
to finally take responsibility for their own country.
  I just want to commend the Senator for his insistence. He has a 
theme, and it is the correct theme, which is that a bipartisan solution 
and resolution is absolutely critical in foreign policy, and 
particularly in war. There is no partisan position in war which is 
right for the Nation. It is always in the middle of a security 
conflict--as we are in the middle of now--where there has to be a 
bipartisan approach. The Senator from Colorado has pled for it, called 
for it, worked for it, and has asserted his vast energy to try to 
achieve it.
  We haven't accomplished it--it being 60 votes. The rules of the 
Senate are that it takes 60 votes to adopt something like this, and the 
Iraq resolutions are operating under that rule, so we need to get the 
60. It is not because of a lack of effort on the part of many of us, 
but surely Senator Salazar is at the head of that list. The Senator 
from Colorado has put forth such Herculean efforts to get to that mass 
of 60 who could agree on a formula that could represent those goals--to 
begin the reduction of our troops and the transition to the new 
missions, which are not in the middle of sectarian conflict but 
supportive missions--and to have a binding period under Levin-Reed, and 
then a goal under some permutation of Levin-Reed to accomplish that in 
9 months.
  So I wanted to add my thanks to those of the Senator from Virginia, 
who very appropriately interrupted the Senator from Colorado, and I 
join in that interruption to thank him and to agree that the Senator 
from Virginia has been very much a part of an effort in this Senate to 
move this process forward over the last few years. And I want to also 
add my thanks to those of the Senator from Colorado of my dear friend 
from Virginia because he has played an important role to the extent 
that we have been able to move this process forward. He has been in the 
middle of that movement.
  It is not nearly enough from my perspective. We have obviously tried 
to get to Levin-Reed, which would change the course in Iraq, and we 
haven't done that yet. But we are going to keep plugging away because 
it is critically important that we succeed in Iraq and that we 
recognize that the only way we are going to succeed is if the Iraqi 
Government works out the political differences among them because there 
is

[[Page S12329]]

no military solution. And the only hope of success is if the Iraqi 
leaders finally do what they promised to do a year ago, which is to 
work out their political differences.
  If I could take one more minute of the Senator's time, there is a 
book out recently about President Bush. I am trying to remember the 
name of the author, who had great access to the President. In this 
book, in the appendix, there is a reference to the fact that I had 
previously told the President that I and many others had taken the 
message to the Iraqi leaders that they have to change, they have to 
work out their political differences; that the American people's 
patience has run out. The President was asked to refer to that and also 
to the debate on the Senate floor.
  What was his reaction to these efforts to change course in Iraq and 
to tell the Iraqi leaders that it is their responsibility?
  The President's response is interesting. He said, accurately, that 
when I told him this report, that a number of us go to Iraq repeatedly 
and tell the Iraqi leaders: You have lost the support of the American 
people. You guys better get your political act together because, folks, 
we are going to begin to reduce troops here. We can't save you from 
yourself--what was the President's response when I told him of that? He 
said:

       Thank you, Senator. Thank you for carrying that message to 
     the Iraqi troops. They've got to hear that.

  It was a positive response--not just to the message which many of us 
have carried, including the Senator from Virginia, the Senator from 
Colorado, and a dozen other Senators--but he thanked me and others for 
telling the Iraqi leaders what he, I think it is clear, would like to 
tell them himself.
  (Ms. KLOBUCHAR assumed the Chair.)
  Mr. WARNER. I remember being in the Cabinet room when that dialog 
took place.
  Mr. LEVIN. And he confirmed it in this book.
  Mr. WARNER. Interesting, but it is important we constantly reiterate 
the message there is no military solution. As you well know in all the 
hearings of the Armed Services Committee, every uniformed officer has 
told us that straightforwardly. They are carrying out their orders from 
the President, but they are reminding us, the Congress and others, 
there is no military solution. The solution has to come by 
reconciliation amongst the Iraqi people, and it is incumbent among the 
current leadership to exercise their sovereign rights to do so.
  I think we have generously taken up the time of our colleague.
  Mr. LEVIN. If I can take 10 more seconds, I thank the Presiding 
Officer, Senator Klobuchar, for helping me out with the name of the 
author. It is Robert Draper.
  Mr. SALAZAR. I thank my colleagues for the colloquy. I do think this 
debate has had an impact. I do remember well the conversations we had 
in the room with the President after we came back from Iraq. There was 
a conversation where the President said that our sending this message 
to the Iraqi people was a very important message, and certainly Senator 
Levin and Senator Warner have been a part of making sure that message 
is, in fact, heard.
  Madam President, what is the parliamentary situation?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is in morning business. Senators 
are allowed to speak up to 10 minutes each.
  Mr. SALAZAR. I ask unanimous consent that I be given 10 more minutes 
to conclude my remarks on the Iraq Study Group.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Madam President, echoing off the comments of my 
colleagues, I go back to the Iraq Study Group--some of the best that we 
have in America--and the vision they set out in their recommendations, 
after they spent a year, saying: We have this huge problem in Iraq. 
What is the best way that we move forward?
  They came up with 79 recommendations on how we ought to move forward 
in Iraq. The heart of the recommendations is set forth in a letter that 
was sent as part of that report by Congressman Hamilton and former 
Secretary James Baker. What they said is this, and I quote from the 
report language that is also included in our legislation. It says:

       Our political leaders must build a bipartisan approach to 
     bring a responsible conclusion to what is now a lengthy and 
     costly war. Our country deserves a debate that prizes 
     substance over rhetoric and a policy that is adequately 
     funded and sustainable. The President and Congress must work 
     together. Our leaders must be candid and forthright with the 
     American people in order to win their support.

  It was in that vein that Democrats and Republicans came together to 
cosponsor the legislation on the implementation of the recommendations. 
I thank them for having stood up, in the sponsorship of the 
legislation. They include Senator Mark Pryor from Arkansas, Senator Bob 
Casey from Pennsylvania, Senator Blanche Lincoln from Arkansas, Senator 
Bill Nelson from Florida, Senator Mary Landrieu from Louisiana, Senator 
Claire McCaskill from Missouri, Senator Kent Conrad from North Dakota, 
Senator Tom Carper from Delaware. These are all good Senators who want 
to figure out a way forward in this issue that befuddles America today. 
But it wasn't just Democrats who came with us to say we have to find a 
new way forward in Iraq. There were Republicans who came forward and 
joined us. We saw Senator Lamar Alexander coming to the floor time and 
time again, wanting to fashion a new way forward. He was joined by 
Senator Bob Bennett, Senator Judd Gregg, Senator Susan Collins, Senator 
John Sununu, Senator Pete Domenici, Senator Arlen Specter, and Senator 
Norm Coleman. At the end of the day, there were 17 cosponsors for this 
legislation which only 10 months ago everybody would have come together 
and said this is the right way to go.
  We remember those days before the Iraq Study Group recommendations 
came out last December when it was highly anticipated. The President 
even delayed a speech and his own set of recommendations until he heard 
from the Iraq Study Group. Most people said this is a very thoughtful 
and good way forward.
  I wanted to come to the floor today and say a few things about the 
legislation. It is legislation which would have set forth a new state 
of law with respect to Iraq. Yes, we have had a tough time in the 
Congress, coming forward with legislation that can muster 60 votes in 
the Senate, so not much legislation has been passed with respect to 
creating a new direction for Iraq. Our legislation would have made it a 
statement of policy--which in essence is a statement of law. This is 
not a sense of the Senate, this is a statement of law. This would have 
been the law of the land with respect to the U.S. efforts concerning 
Iraq. I wish to review a few provisions of the legislation.
  The first of those has to do with the sense of the Congress that we 
move forward with a major diplomatic surge in the region. That is a 
sense of Congress because, appropriately, that belongs with the 
President and with the State Department, in terms of what we have to do 
to reassert the international involvement to bring about a long-term 
solution to the problem we face in Iraq. Similar to most of my 
colleagues who traveled to Iraq in the last few years, I always wonder: 
Where are the neighbors? Why aren't they more involved in dealing with 
the issue that is so vitally important to the populations of all those 
in the Middle East? Where are they?
  Some of them are sitting on their hands. Some of them who are not 
sitting on their hands are actually helping foment the violence we see 
in Iraq today, whether that is Iran or whether that is Syria. What we 
need to do is have a diplomatic surge to move forward to help bring the 
world together to find a solution that will work to bring about 
stability in Iraq. We set forth that as a sense of the Senate.
  In addition to the sense of the Senate, which has some 24 measures, 
all of which were taken out of the Iraq Study Group recommendations, we 
also include the statements of law. Those are the statements of policy. 
The first and most important of those statements of policy is in 
section 5 of the legislation. That section says ``it shall be''--``it 
shall be.'' Not it could be, not it might be, not it ought to be 
considered. It says: It shall be the policy of the United States to 
move forward to a changed mission--to a changed mission

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from one of combat to one of training, equipping, advising and 
providing support for security and military forces in Iraq and to 
support counterterrorism operations in the country of Iraq. So we do a 
mission change with this legislation.
  Next, also the statement of law, we call for the strengthening of the 
U.S. military. I think there is a broad, bipartisan consensus that what 
has happened in the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan is that our military 
has been strained. Our military has been strained because of the 
humongous effort that has gone into prosecuting the war in those two 
places over the last 5\1/2\ years. So we, in our legislation, follow 
the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, requiring the 
strengthening of the U.S. military.
  Third, a statement of policy with respect to the police and criminal 
justice system in Iraq. On several of the codels I have taken to Iraq, 
one of the things that is absolutely phenomenal to me is that there is 
not a criminal justice system that today is working in Iraq. So the bad 
guys, when they are caught--what ends up happening to them? Are they 
prosecuted in the way that we would prosecute bad guys here in the 
United States of America? Is there a system of courts that is up and 
functioning? The police system, especially the national police in Iraq, 
is dysfunctional. It is infiltrated by members of the militias. Those 
are some of the findings of the GAO, as well as some of the findings in 
General Jones' recent report. So one of the things we require as a 
statement of policy is that the police and criminal justice system in 
Iraq be transformed.
  Also in our legislation we required the statement of policy on the 
oil sector in Iraq. We know the Iraqis need to come up with a 
reformation of their law and with changes to their law that will 
require the equitable distribution of the oil resources in Iraq.
  There are other measures here that are set forth in the legislation. 
One that I will refer to briefly has to do with conditions and the 
support of the United States in Iraq. This is section 11 of our 
legislation. In section 11 of our legislation we say: It shall be the 
policy of the United States to condition continued U.S. political, 
military and economic support for Iraq upon the demonstration by the 
Government of Iraq of sufficient political will and the making of 
substantial progress toward achieving the milestones that are described 
in that legislation. So the conditioning of the U.S. support for Iraq 
is based on them taking on the responsibility for achieving the 
milestones that were set forth in the Iraq Study Group's 
recommendation.
  Those are major changes. I believe this legislation--although there 
is other legislation here that I have supported, including legislation 
that called for timelines with respect to the reduction of troops--this 
legislation also is very good and very substantive legislation.
  Let me essentially sum up what this legislation would have done. The 
first thing it would have done is call for the mission change. I think 
more and more I hear a chorus rising in the Senate, in many of the 
pieces of legislation that we have seen, that it is time for us to 
change the mission from one of combat to one of assistance; from one of 
combat, where we are policing a sectarian civil war today, to one of 
training and equipping and counterterrorism within Iraq. That change of 
mission is something we ought to be able to accomplish in the Senate.
  Second, the diplomatic surge. We know without the diplomatic surge we 
are not going to be able to succeed in Iraq. We know we need to have 
the neighborhood, the region, much more involved in trying to bring 
about stability in Iraq.
  Third, the conditioning of the U.S. support on progress and on the 
milestones set forth there.
  I think, regarding these broad agreements, we need to keep pressuring 
the Iraqis to move forward to adopt those, not only to adopt, implement 
the milestones and benchmarks they themselves came up with.
  Let me conclude by saying this debate is not yet over. There are 
still groups, numbers of Senators, who are trying to figure out whether 
we can bring enough of a bipartisan way forward that will help us 
change the mission in Iraq. I look forward to working with both my 
Democratic and Republican colleagues, seeing whether we can in fact 
achieve that end.
  At the end of the day, there is a lot at stake in this issue for all 
of us in America. When one thinks, first of all, about the fact that we 
are approaching 4,000 of our best, our bravest men and women who have 
died in this war in Iraq, and we know as a fact we have 30,000 American 
men and women in uniform who have been grievously injured in that 
nation; we know the fiscal consequence of this war is now $750 billion 
and rising--expectations now are that the war costs will be at $1 
trillion--we as a Senate and Congress have a responsibility, in my 
view, to address this issue.
  I hope, in the days ahead, as we address the Defense appropriations 
legislation, as well as the supplemental which the President has 
requested--additional money for the ongoing effort, the so-called 
bridge funding--that we can revisit this issue and see whether we can 
come together to try to forge a new way forward in Iraq.
  I yield the floor.

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