[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 21]
[House]
[Page 29811]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE WAR IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, we are beginning to see comparisons being 
made between the U.S. situation in Iraq and the situation we were in in 
Vietnam. Some are valid; some are not.
  One comparison is completely valid and could apply to any conflict. 
Soldiers get hurt and maimed and die. As a young doctor, I served as a 
medical officer in the Navy from 1968 to 1970. I worked in California 
with troops evacuated from Vietnam, and I see those faces when I go up 
to Walter Reed today.
  The issues that we discuss on the floor, who was pushy with the CIA, 
who knew more than he said, who knew less than he claimed, are 
important; but they are not important because we want to play some kind 
of political game of ``gotcha.'' They are important because they are 
key links in the chain of events that led to more than 130,000 
Americans being deployed in Iraq, that led to more than 400 dying, and 
led to wards filled with boys on Georgia Avenue who do not have arms 
and legs anymore.
  More Americans have died in Iraq in the past 8 months than died in 
the first 3 years in Vietnam. Regardless of whether this war makes or 
breaks the Bush Presidency, they are dead.
  I did not support the President's decision to go to war. I believe 
that whatever threat the Hussein regime posed was being effectively 
contained. I believed and still believe that the presence of large 
numbers of U.N. inspectors roaming around Iraq was doing a credible job 
of making sure that Hussein's desires and ambitions did not materialize 
into weapons and delivery systems.
  Containment, however, has a bad name in this administration. But I am 
old enough to remember President Reagan using it to bring down the 
Soviet Union. But containment was abandoned on March 19; and it is not 
over, that war they started.
  While it is important for us to continue questioning how we got into 
the war and learn what lessons we can, our urgent task now is to figure 
out how to get out. We need to know whether there are 5,000 guerillas 
fighting us, as General Abizaid says, or 50,000, as the CIA apparently 
believes.
  This is no small matter. Our Defense Secretary has created his own 
in-house Office of Special Intelligence to rival the CIA. We do not 
know which agency is closer to the truth. Lawrence of Arabia in World 
War I did awfully well with just 3,000 Arab irregulars. They tied down 
nearly 70 times that many Turkish troops. With a ratio like that, 5,000 
guerrillas could tie down 350,000 of our troops. If 50,000 is the right 
number, we are looking at 3\1/2\ million of our own troops. And 
remember the Turks did not beat Lawrence, just as the Russians did not 
defeat the Afghan mujahedeen and Carthage did not rout Rome.
  Our troops are identified as crusaders, invaders, occupiers, the 
superpower. American troops are magnets for centuries of resentment and 
targets for those who within Iraq are happy for the opportunity to stir 
those resentments up.
  We need to know whether there is a plan to get out in a reasonable 
way or not. I do not believe we should walk away and leave the Iraqis 
in chaos. However much I deplore the way we went in, I do not want to 
have to deplore the way we get out. It is tempting to do what Senator 
Aiken from Vermont suggested in Vietnam, declare victory and get out; 
but it would be wrong. What would be right is to level with the 
American people, level with our allies, level with the U.N., and make a 
sustainable plan to leave Iraq; and I pray to leave Iraq better off 
than when we found it.
  So far, the President has only said we were going to have an election 
after we had a constitution. Now we are going to have an election 
before the constitution and we are going to be out of there on June 1. 
It looks like it is all tied to the timing of the election in 2004. 
That is unfair to the people that we are serving in Iraq who have lost 
arms, who have lost legs, who have been severely injured. The President 
should be honest with us and honest with the U.N. and strike a workable 
deal. It can be done, but it requires the President of the United 
States to get off this attitude of ``bring them on.'' That was 
foolishness from the start, and now we have people coming in from all 
over the Middle East to be involved in taking on our troops, and each 
day we lose more. There is no excuse.
  But the President goes out to fund-raisers. He goes to Great Britain. 
He says he will meet with the bereaved over in Great Britain. But he 
does not go to public ceremonies honoring our dead in this country. Why 
is that? Is he afraid? Why does he not go forward and stand next to the 
mothers and the fathers as they lower their loved ones into the ground?
  This President has never been straight with us about this war, and he 
is going to have to be, or we are going to wind up exactly as we did in 
Vietnam, running from the top of the embassy or some other way that we 
leave the country in disgrace. We should not allow that to happen to 
our troops.

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