[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 71 (Thursday, May 1, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3649-S3650]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF ``MISSION ACCOMPLISHED''

  Mr. REID. Madam President, 5 years ago on the deck of an aircraft 
carrier returning from the Middle East, America and the world witnessed 
perhaps the greatest act of hubris our country has ever seen in 
wartime. Resplendent in a flight suit, landing theatrically in a 
fighter jet, President Bush declared: ``In the battle for Iraq, United 
States and our allies have prevailed.'' Above him was a banner, printed 
by the White House, with the idea coming from Karl Rove. That banner 
proclaimed ``Mission Accomplished.''
  With families fleeing from Iraq by the tens of thousands to live as 
refugees, now approaching 2\1/2\ million--mission accomplished? With no 
government in place, with towns destroyed, with infrastructure in 
shambles--mission accomplished?
  When President Bush put on his flight suit, 139 American troops had 
lost their lives. Today, the toll has reached 4,058 or 4,059. In April, 
with the highest death count in 7 months, 51 Americans were killed.
  When President Bush landed on the runway of the USS Abraham Lincoln, 
548 Americans had been wounded. Today that count is far more than 
30,000, many of those grave injuries.
  When President Bush announced that ``major combat operations have 
ended,'' the American taxpayers had spent about $79 billion in Iraq. 
Today, $526 billion and counting, we are spending $5,000 every second, 
7 days a week, every week of the month, every month of the year. Those 
costs are going up, not down, with experts such as Nobel Prize-winning 
economist Joseph Stiglitz predicting $3 trillion will be the cost of 
the war, with every penny of it borrowed--from Japan, from China, from 
Saudi Arabia, even from Mexico.
  In May, 2003, many of our allies had already begun to stand apart 
from us on the war. Today, our moral authority in the world has been 
gravely damaged. Not one American looks back on the 5 years since that 
aircraft stunt with any sense of satisfaction. Our country looks back 
with grief, sadness, yet with a fierce and unwavering commitment to 
finally change the mission and responsibly end the war in Iraq and 
bring our troops home.
  That day aboard the USS Lincoln, our President told us the war would 
not be endless. He said: ``Americans, following a battle, want nothing 
more than to return home.'' He told the brave men and women aboard that 
carrier that home was their direction that day; that:

       After service in the Afghan and Iraq theaters of the war, 
     after 100,000 miles on the longest carrier deployment in U.S. 
     history, you are homeward bound.

  Madam President, let me again read that quote:

       After service in the Afghan and Iraq theaters of the war, 
     after 100,000 miles on the

[[Page S3650]]

     longest carrier deployment in U.S. history, you are homeward 
     bound.

  To the men and women aboard the Lincoln that day, that speech must 
seem a distant memory. Could they have imagined that day that many of 
them, and their brothers and sisters in arms, would now be in their 
third, fourth, and fifth tours of duty? The ``Mission Accomplished'' 
speech will rightly be remembered with great anguish by all.
  Look at this. This chart, sadly, is a little behind but it makes the 
picture. I indicated that wounded troops are more than 30,000 now. 
Troops in Iraq on that day were 5,000 more then, with the troops, some 
of them, coming home.

  Cost of the war to the taxpayers--you can see that.
  What do you American people think about the war in Iraq, was it worth 
fighting? You can see the numbers.
  The estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed--Johns Hopkins 
University did a study. Their study says over 200,000 Iraqis have been 
killed. The number of Iraqis who have fled their homes is almost 5 
million. The number of Iraqi security forces--we have trained them, we 
paid for them--is almost half a million.
  Iraqi prison population.
  Number of daily attacks by insurgents and militias in Iraq: to date 
it is about 55.
  The number of multiple-fatality bombings in Iraq in May of 2003: 
zero. Now look at that.
  Suicide attacks: almost 1000.
  The price of oil: in May of 2003, it was $26.03 a barrel. Yesterday 
we had a little drop in the oil price. It is down from more than $120 a 
barrel the last few days to only $115 a barrel.
  The price of gas then was $1.50. If you are lucky, you can find it 
someplace in the United States for $3.62. That is the average.
  George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld will be written in the 
pages of history as the men who rushed a peaceful, deliberate nation 
headfirst into war without the slightest notion of what it meant to run 
or to end it. Five years later, the cost of their hubris is 
staggering--in lives lost and damaged, dollars spent, moral authority 
squandered.
  Let's think back to the men and women aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln 
that day 5 years ago; the excitement they must have felt by a 
Presidential visit; the encouragement of his words; the satisfaction of 
heading home to their families after a job well done.
  They did their jobs, but the Commander in Chief didn't do his--as he 
has not done his job here at home, with record gas prices, record oil 
prices, and an economy spiraling into recession. I met with a number of 
homebuilders yesterday in room S-219. Have we reached the bottom in the 
housing market? They said: No, we are not close yet. About 50 million 
Americans are uninsured for health costs.
  On this fifth anniversary, a sorry moment in our country's history, 
we pause to honor the troops aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and all our 
troops, their brothers and sisters in arms who fought and sacrificed 
and continue to fight in Iraq. They deserve not the false hope of a 
slogan engineered by Karl Rove, the President's chief slogan maker, but 
the real hope of a responsible end to a war that has raged far too 
long.

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