[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 174 (Friday, November 9, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H13511-H13512]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 CONGRESS MUST ACT TO HELP BRING ABOUT THE REDEPLOYMENT OF OUR TROOPS 
                              OUT OF IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.

[[Page H13512]]

  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, throughout most of our history, the world 
has admired the United States for our dedication to freedom, 
international law, and human rights. But today America's prestige is in 
the pits because of the administration's reckless occupation of Iraq.
  The resignation last week of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy 
at the State Department brought new attention to our low standing in 
the world. The Under Secretary was hired in 2005 to improve our image 
in the world with a public relations campaign. But the effort failed. 
It failed because no amount of spin could overcome the catastrophic 
consequences of our occupation of Iraq.
  Today, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, our image in 
the world is actually worse than it was before the public relations 
campaign began. Pew surveyed 33 countries and found that the United 
States is viewed less favorably in 26 of those countries. To be fair to 
the Under Secretary, her bosses in the White House had done a good job 
of trashing America's image in the world long before she started her 
job.
  At the beginning of this decade, Mr. Speaker, the United States was 
viewed very favorably in many countries. But not anymore. For example, 
78 percent of the German people viewed the United States favorably in 
the year 2000. Now it's just 37 percent. In Spain we have gone from a 
favorability rating of 50 percent to 23 percent. In Great Britain we 
have gone from 83 percent to 56 percent. And in France we have gone 
from 62 to 39.
  In the Muslim world, we have just about fallen off the charts. In 
Turkey, for example, we have gone from 52 percent to just 12 percent.
  And, most tragically, our occupation of Iraq has undermined support 
for American leadership in the fight against terrorism. In fact, less 
than half the people in all the countries I just cited are now willing 
to follow our lead.
  We shouldn't be surprised by this. It is much harder to convince 
others to get behind us in the fight against terrorism when they 
actually believe that we are the threat to peace ourselves. And it's 
much harder for us to fight many other world problems, including 
poverty, disease, lack of education, and global warming when our 
standing in the world has hit rock bottom.
  This foreign policy disaster is the result of a White House that has 
run amok for nearly 7 years. When you tear up your treaties, walk away 
from your friends, condone torture, go to war under false pretenses, 
and carelessly throw around words like ``World War III,'' you don't 
make America stronger; you make America weaker by destroying our 
credibility and undermining our moral authority.
  The American people understand this, and they are demanding a new 
course for our Nation. They know the administration will never give us 
that; so they are looking to Congress to do the job. So far we have 
failed, but we have the power to turn things around, the power of the 
purse. We must use it, and we must use it to insist that any further 
funding for Iraq be dedicated to bringing our troops home. We must 
fully fund the safe, orderly, and timely redeployment of our troops out 
of Iraq. And we must also force the withdrawal of all of our military 
contractors who are acting like thugs in our Nation. We have a chance. 
We have a chance right now. If we don't take advantage of it, we will 
have failed our children and we will have failed America.

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