[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 19235-19237]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, those of us who listened to Prime Minister 
Allawi today could not help being overwhelmingly impressed by the 
courage and the strength of this individual, as he outlined the hopes 
and dreams of his nation, which he is leading as an interim Prime 
Minister, and which nation is obviously going through tremendous strain 
and stress.
  I heard the Senator from New Jersey just recently on the floor. I 
hope the Senator from New Jersey listened to Prime Minister Allawi, but 
maybe he had not, because much of what the Senator from New Jersey was 
saying about Iraq was starkly different than what Prime Minister Allawi 
said.
  The points the Prime Minister made which I thought were so telling 
were, first, that the people of Iraq do want independence and they do 
want liberty and they do want freedom, that they will hold elections, 
and that they have overcome great odds, 30 years of despotism of the 
most horrifying kind--tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, 
potentially millions of their citizenry being savagely treated and 
killed by Saddam Hussein. They have come through that. They have moved 
toward democracy, and they intend to hold elections in January. That is 
a statement of extraordinary strength.
  Secondly, he made the point, which I think is a telling and 
appropriate point, that Iraq has become the frontline of the fight 
against terrorists. The way he phrased it is: It is the place where the 
forces of hope are fighting the forces of fear. There can be no 
question about that.
  He made the third point, which I believe is critical: That to pursue 
a course of defeatism in Iraq will lead to an emboldening attitude 
amongst terrorists throughout the world and will cause us to face many 
more years of fierce, intense, and brutal attacks from terrorists, 
which might otherwise be undermined to some degree, hopefully, if we 
are able to set up a functioning free state of Iraq where liberty 
rules, where women have rights, where the strength of law exists. That 
sort of course is what we are on and what we should pursue there.
  The personal courage of this individual cannot be understated. There 
can be no question but that the interim Prime Minister of Iraq, because 
he speaks for freedom and he speaks for democracy, is the No. 1 target 
of the terrorists within his nation, of which there are, obviously, a 
fair number functioning.
  But the point he makes is that they represent the distinct minority 
of his people, and to a large extent they come from outside his nation, 
and the hangover from the Baathist Party which ran such a despot 
government which was so authoritarian and so destructive to human life 
and freedom, and that the vast majority of the Iraqi citizens seek 
freedom and seek liberty, and that right now, today, significant 
progress has been made. He made the point that 15 of the 18 provinces 
could today hold an election and will hold an election in January, 
obviously--a huge stride forward.
  I was also interested to see the response of the candidate for 
President from the other side of the aisle, Senator Kerry, to the 
statements by Prime Minister Allawi.
  When he was specifically asked how he reacted, he said: The President 
is saying one thing and being contradicted by the Prime Minister. Then 
he went on to say that things are disastrous in Iraq.
  He had said earlier this week that Iraq is in chaos and that actually 
Saddam Hussein's administration was better than the chaos. I am 
paraphrasing him here, but essentially that was the purpose of his 
statement, that the way Saddam Hussein was replaced, the chaos which 
has succeeded him is worse than Saddam Hussein--a statement which I 
think and I hope he regrets making, and certainly which is, according 
to the Prime Minister, not credible because, as the Prime Minister 
pointed out today, the people of Iraq are seeking and pursuing freedom 
and moving toward elections. And they have a government that has been 
formed through a constitutional process.
  So it is really not the President and the Prime Minister who are 
speaking in opposite terms; it is Senator Kerry and the Prime Minister 
who are speaking in opposite terms. They, obviously, have significantly 
different views of what is happening in Iraq. The Prime Minister of 
Iraq maybe does not know as much about Iraq as the Senator from 
Massachusetts. But if he does know as much about Iraq as the Senator 
from Massachusetts, and I suspect he does, his view of Iraq is starkly 
different than basically the attitude of defeatism which is being 
pursued or presented by the Senator from Massachusetts.
  It is also ironic that in his response at this press conference to 
what Mr. Allawi said, he basically said Mr. Allawi was wrong, that the 
``reports are pretty devastating,'' is the term Senator Kerry used, 
that ``we are losing the peace,'' is a term Senator

[[Page 19236]]

Kerry used, that ``we are not getting the reconstruction aid out,'' and 
that ``we are not training the Iraqi personnel to defend themselves.''
  Prime Minister Allawi disagrees with him on all those points. He 
thinks we are moving toward a policy of peace that is going to lead 
toward freedom for his people. He recognizes we are in a difficult 
time, and he said that very openly, and that there are those in his 
nation who, unfortunately, will use the horrific and barbarous tactics 
of beheading and car bombing and cowardly attacks on children and women 
as a way to try to disrupt the movement toward freedom.
  He recognizes that, but he also says progress is being made, dramatic 
progress. In fact, as is pointed out today, 15 of 18 provinces could 
hold an election today. That is progress toward peace, which Senator 
Kerry says does not exist there. He says that the reconstruction money 
is not going out. That is not what Prime Minister Allawi said. Prime 
Minister Allawi went through a litany, a long list of schools that have 
opened, hospitals that have opened, books that have been supplied, 
businesses that have begun as a result of reconstruction aid. More is 
on the way, and it is in the pipeline. He talked about the excitement, 
really, of his nation coming back to being a nation of commerce.
  When Senator Kerry says the troops are not being trained--and Senator 
Kerry mocked in this press conference Secretary Rumsfeld who got 
numbers incorrect on the issue of how many troops were being trained. 
It was a mistake, no question about it. The Secretary admitted to that. 
But as far as Senator Kerry was concerned that mistake, once admitted 
to, was still a mistake that deserved to be mocked. But the mistake 
Senator Kerry makes is that he is saying the number is 5,000--5,000 
troops. That is not what the Prime Minister said. The Prime Minister 
said 100,000, and growing, and that people are seeking to participate 
in the security forces of Iraq.
  Furthermore, what he said was he did not want any more American 
troops, that he recognizes the responsibility of protecting Iraq should 
fall and will fall to a free Iraq Government and Iraqi security forces 
which answers to that government. He expects them to be able to 
accomplish that. He made it very clear that Senator Kerry may have a 
different view but that he thinks, from his experience in Iraq, that is 
not the case.
  If you listened to Senator Kerry in his press conference, in response 
to Prime Minister Allawi's statement to the joint meeting of Congress, 
you almost sense that he hopes things are not going well. He, of 
course, gives the token statements: Oh, I really do want peace there. I 
really do want to win there. But with every token statement, there is a 
followup statement of how disastrous things are, how much chaos there 
is--a follow-on to his statement that replacing Saddam Hussein was a 
mistake because chaos followed.
  It is an attitude which cannot possibly assist the Iraqi people as 
they reach for freedom, as they reach for liberty, to have a major 
candidate running for President of the United States basically saying 
they will not succeed and that it is time to take drastically different 
action. It is an attitude which I also suspect must have some impact on 
our own troops there who are looking for consistency from our leaders 
in their support for their efforts in that very difficult situation.
  In this press conference, Senator Kerry went on to say that he has 
told the President, and he used the words: I have stood in Fulton, MO, 
and I gave the President advice about what he needed to do, and he did 
not take it. I stood at Georgetown University a year and a half ago and 
I gave the President advice about what he needed to do, and he did not 
take it. I stood on the floor of the Senate and I gave the President 
advice about what he needed to do, and he did not take it. I stood up 
last week in New York City and gave the President advice, and he did 
not take it.
  The problem is, of course, he kept changing his advice. In every one 
of those speeches, the proposals he laid out as to what we should do in 
Iraq were different. He went from being for the war to being against 
the war. He went from being for giving the President authority to move 
forward to saying the President moved forward inappropriately with the 
authority. He went from saying that Saddam Hussein should absolutely be 
removed--and in his words; I paraphrase again but fairly accurately--
that anybody who did not understand the necessity of removing Saddam 
Hussein should not be elected President because they did not understand 
the significance and the importance of removing Saddam Hussein and how 
significant that was--he went from that position to saying Saddam 
Hussein should not have been removed because it would create chaos. He 
may have given the President advice. He has advice every week.
  The fact is, there have been such different positions in all these 
periods when he gave advice that we would have looked like a windmill 
or like a weather vane on top of a barn in the middle of a hurricane. 
Had we been following that advice, we would have been shifting 
positions so often.
  The point is the President has said: We will stay with the Iraqi 
people as they seek peace and freedom. And if we are successful in 
creating a democracy which functions in Iraq--and Prime Minister Allawi 
made clear that is exactly what they intend to do, and they are well 
down the road toward accomplishing that, with 15 of 18 provinces being 
ready for elections now, and they intend to pursue elections in 
January--where liberty reigns and where law reigns and where women have 
rights, we will fundamentally undermine the capacity of fundamentally 
Islamic movements, the terrorist groups of this world, to recruit 
within the Muslim world, because the Muslim people will understand that 
freedom and democracy and rights and women having rights works to the 
benefit of their society and gives them a better life.
  The Senator from Massachusetts has been quick to run down the 
statements made by Prime Minister Allawi. That is unfortunate. When 
Prime Minister Allawi said the only thing that could harm them would be 
forces of defeatism, he was speaking for his people. They want hope. 
They want the opportunity to succeed. And they need our support to 
accomplish that.
  I have watched the evolution or the mutation or the development of 
Senator Kerry's position relative to Iraq. He spent a lot of time in 
New Hampshire campaigning in the primary. We had a chance to observe it 
there. At that time he was quite aggressively supportive of pursuing 
the efforts in Iraq. He was confronting, of course, an individual who 
took a much different position, Howard Dean, who said we should not be 
there. We should get out of there and peace at any price.
  After that, he moved back to more of an attitude: We are making 
mistakes, and we should not be there under the context that we are 
there.
  Then he moved to Saddam Hussein should have survived. It is better 
than the chaos that exists there today. And then he has moved to, we 
have made so many mistakes, I disagree absolutely with everything this 
administration has done relative to Iraq, which leaves the alternative: 
what would he do. Obviously, he would not have put Iraq on a course to 
peace, on the course to independence, on the course to freedom, on the 
course to democracy, on the course to liberty, on the course to giving 
women rights they didn't have before. That is what the President has 
pursued. He would have abandoned--and it appears he would still--Prime 
Minister Allawi who has come forward so courageously and has stated so 
distinctly the basic essence of what this war is about, which is that 
it is about people seeking freedom.
  He quoted Prime Minister Blair and he said: Prime Minister Blair said 
that this was a battle between people who are seeking freedom and those 
who wish to overwhelm freedom and that the basic impetus of all people 
is to want to be free; it doesn't matter whether they are Christian or 
Muslim, people want to be free. Prime Minister Allawi is trying to 
accomplish that for his people, with his people in Iraq. Yet we have a 
press conference here by the leading candidate of the other party,

[[Page 19237]]

Senator Kerry, who basically contradicts all of what the Prime Minister 
has said, both as to the substance of what is happening on the ground 
and as to the purposes of what his goals are. That is terribly 
unfortunate. It is a fundamental shift in where Senator Kerry was when 
he was campaigning in New Hampshire, at least. It is almost as if he 
has decided to step into the shoes of Howard Dean and pursue that 
course as the new policy of the Democratic Party in this Presidential 
campaign.
  That is unfortunate because Howard Dean, as decent and as honorable a 
person as he is--and I had the great privilege to serve with him as 
Governor; we became Governors of neighboring States about the same 
time; we had many very good experiences--the fact is, Governor Dean's 
policies were the wrong policies. And they were rejected by the party 
in the nominating process. It is unfortunate that Senator Kerry has 
sort of morphed into that position as he has evolved in this campaign.
  This is a period of considerable need for consistency and 
determination on the part of our Nation, if we are to be successful in 
supporting a heroic and strong effort on the part of Prime Minister 
Allawi and his nation to obtain freedom and democracy and the rule of 
law which comes with it. I certainly hope we will not be abandoning 
that cause.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.

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