[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 86 (Wednesday, May 22, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3030-S3032]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                  Iran

  Mr. President, yesterday there was a briefing for Members of the 
Senate, Democrats and Republicans. It was a closed-door briefing in an 
area of the Capitol the public has no access to. In that briefing room, 
they close the doors; they take away your telephone; and they ask if 
you have any other electronic devices to make sure that when you walk 
in that room, you can hear things, classified information, sometimes 
top-secret information, which is not available to most Americans and 
should not be. It is sensitive.

[[Page S3031]]

It is important. It relates to our national security. We don't meet 
there a lot--maybe once a month at most--and when we meet, we are 
together as Democrats and Republicans for a briefing.
  The briefing yesterday was from the Secretary of State, Mr. Pompeo, 
and the Acting Secretary of Defense. They came in and talked to us 
about the situation in Iran. I can't disclose the specifics--I am duty 
bound not to--but I can speak in general terms about what was said and 
what I think it means to the rest of America.
  I listened in disbelief yesterday to the administration's briefing 
justifying a confrontation with Iran. While I was listening, I thought 
to myself, before America plunges into another Middle Eastern war, we 
ought to take stock and remember how we got into the two wars in that 
part of the world--two wars, one of which is still raging, that left 
American soldiers subject to injury and death every day and cost 
American taxpayers billions of dollars.
  When we got into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we were led to believe 
that suddenly there were urgent events spiraling out of control in the 
Middle East that could only be stopped by U.S. military intervention. 
Some of my colleagues still in Congress today were here during that 
debate. On the floor of the Senate, we voted on the question of the 
invasion of Iraq. I remember it because it was about 4 weeks before the 
election. The vote was taken around midnight, and most Members, as they 
voted, left. I stayed because I wanted to hear the final vote.
  There were 23 of us who voted against the invasion of Iraq: 1 
Republican--Senator Chafee--and 22 Democrats. I can recall that some of 
my colleagues who voted against that invasion of Iraq lingered in the 
well. One of them was Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. Wellstone was up for 
reelection--a tough reelection in his home State. The popular sentiment 
was on the side of the invasion of Iraq. Wellstone voted against it.
  I went up to him, and I said: ``Paul, I hope this doesn't cost you 
the election.''
  He said to me: ``It is all right if it does. This is who I am. This 
is what I believe, and the people who elected me expect nothing less.''
  Sadly, Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash before that election a 
few weeks later. I still remember him right there in the well, talking 
to him about that vote.
  At the time, we had been told by Vice President Cheney and others 
that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which threatened not only 
friends and allies, like Israel, but could threaten the United States 
of America.
  Former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle argued before the invasion of 
Iraq that the Iraqis were going to pay for the war from their oil 
wealth. They would pay for this--whatever it would cost the American 
taxpayers--and he said there was no doubt that they would.
  President George W. Bush claimed the war was his last choice, and 
then he provocatively tried to link al-Qaida--the terrorists 
responsible for
9/11--with Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq--a specious claim that 
has never been proven and was restated by Secretary of Defense Donald 
Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld even tried to claim that a war in Iraq would last--
listen to this--``five days or [maybe] maybe five weeks or five months, 
but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that,'' said our 
Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. We are now in the 18th year of 
that war.
  Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Cheney 
said that when the Americans arrive in Iraq, we would be welcomed as 
liberators. Wolfowitz went on to say--he estimated that this call for 
hundreds of thousands of American troops to fight there was way off the 
mark.
  Five days or 5 weeks or 5 months?
  Well, the war started not long after these claims. It included 
deploying more than 150,000 American troops over and over and over 
again, and it has lasted for 18 years. No weapons of mass destruction 
were ever found. We were not greeted as liberators. The Iraqi oil 
interest did not pay for the cost of the war; the American taxpayers 
and families did. Sadly, more than 4,500 Americans gave their lives in 
that war, and 32,000 were wounded, some gravely wounded.
  One of those wounded veterans is my colleague in the Senate, Senator 
Tammy Duckworth. She was in the National Guard as a helicopter pilot. 
Twelve years ago, when she was flying over Iraq, a rocket-propelled 
grenade came into the cockpit and exploded. As the helicopter came to a 
crash on the ground, Tammy lost both of her legs and was at that point 
in danger of losing her arm, which she didn't, thank goodness. Today, 
she serves as my colleague in the Senate.
  In one of the many cruel ironies in what I believe to be one of the 
worst foreign policy disasters in American history, the unintended 
consequence of our invasion of Iraq was to give the nation of Iran a 
strategic victory by virtually turning Iraq into a client state.
  Make no mistake--our war and invasion of Iraq emboldened and 
empowered Iran. How do some of the current occupants of the White House 
driving policy against Iran feel about the Iraq war disaster? Well, in 
2015, National Security Advisor John Bolton said: ``I still think the 
decision to overthrow Saddam was correct.'' He made that statement 1 
month after writing a New York Times op-ed--this is John Bolton, the 
President's National Security Advisor--an op-ed entitled: ``To Stop 
Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran.''
  Now match this painful lesson in history with the current President 
having surpassed 10,000 false or misleading claims so far in a little 
over 2 years in office--more than 10,000 false claims in less than 3 
years. So you will understand my skepticism in trusting this 
administration of the President's to tell us the truth about the next 
war they are planning in the Middle East. In fact, within a single 
week, President Trump tweeted that he had hoped not to go to war with 
Iran and then went on to tweet that he would lead the fight ``that will 
be the official end of Iran.'' You can't keep up with this President 
and his tweets.
  Does this not trouble or give pause to any Republican colleague whose 
constituents might be called to serve in the third Middle Eastern war 
that the United States is participating in?
  Let me also remind my colleagues that before any one of us can vote 
on the Senate floor, we walk down this aisle, over to this corner, and 
wait for the Vice President of the United States to ask us to take the 
oath of office, to swear to uphold the Constitution of the United 
States.
  The Constitution of this country makes it expressly clear that the 
decision to go to war cannot be made solely by a President; it is to be 
made by the American people through their elected representatives in 
Congress, in the House and in the Senate. Before there is any war, the 
American people should have the last word, according to our 
Constitution.
  What I find most stunning about the administration's march to war in 
Iran is that its actions have really contributed to the current tension 
and confrontation we have in Iran. President Obama worked for years to 
come up with an agreement and to bring together an alliance to make 
certain that Iran could never develop a nuclear weapon.
  Listen to the participants in this alliance: of course, the United 
Kingdom, our longtime ally; France; the European Union; the United 
States; Germany; Russia and China. They are all part of this agreement 
to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. The Republicans opposed 
it to a person, but the President was able to implement it.
  That agreement called for constant inspection by United Nation's 
agencies--nuclear agencies--to make certain that Iran lived up to the 
terms of the treaty and did not develop nuclear weapons. It worked. The 
inspectors came and told us, time and again, there were no locked 
doors, there was no denial of entry, no denial of access. They were 
able to look behind closed doors and came to the conclusion that Iran 
was complying with the treaty and not developing nuclear weapons.
  Then President Trump announced he was walking away from this 
agreement, walking away from this requirement under the treaty for 
neutral inspectors to crawl all over Iran and make sure they were 
living up to the terms of the agreement. That was the beginning of the 
Trump policy on Iran that leads us to where we are today.

[[Page S3032]]

  President Trump has been pursuing a provocative and incomprehensible 
policy of regime change in Iran, trying at one moment to flatter and 
meet with President Rouhani to negotiate and then the next moment 
threatening to obliterate Iran from the planet. President Trump 
withdrew from that nuclear agreement and tried to starve Iran of the 
agreed benefits it was to receive from that deal.
  Let me be clear, there is no doubt that Iran is responsible for 
dangerous conduct around the world, which I will never approve of, but 
an Iran with nuclear weapons is dramatically more dangerous than one 
without. The President doesn't understand that basic fact. Why not push 
back against Iran without withdrawing from the nuclear agreement? Why 
give them the pretext for belligerence and undermine our credibility 
with the global powers that joined us in that nuclear agreement?
  The tragic end result of this President's incoherent policy in Iran 
is that our allies are united against us, and Iran may restart nuclear 
activities within the next few weeks. President Trump's policy at the 
direction of Mr. Bolton seems to have only increased regional tensions, 
incentivized Iran to restart its nuclear weapons program, and fomented 
a pretext for another Middle Eastern war.
  This Congress, too often a rubberstamp for this President's worst 
behavior, must do more in the next few weeks and months to stop this 
effort based on the briefing we received yesterday. Wars are so easy to 
get into and so difficult to get out of. When I hear our advisers, in 
general terms, talking about short wars, I think about Iraq, and I 
think about Afghanistan and the fact that, 18 years later, with 
gravestones all across the United States, we are still paying the price 
for decisions that were made so long ago. Let us think twice before we 
engage in direct military confrontation with any country and, 
certainly, with Iran.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  (The remarks of Ms. Collins pertaining to the introduction of S. 1602 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Ms. COLLINS. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.