[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19588-19589]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        LITTLE SAFETY IN BAGHDAD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 20, 2004, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, let me begin on a note of 
agreement with my predecessor in the well. I do think what we are 
seeing in Serbia has been very encouraging. And I am glad that 
President Clinton persevered in doing that over the opposition of a 
large number of Republicans in this chamber who sought to prevent him 
from carrying out that policy. But I want to talk now about Iraq.
  We went into Iraq, I thought, unwisely and unnecessarily. I believe 
that my vote against that was the right vote. But even those who voted 
for it have a hard time dealing with what has been one of the most 
incompetently executed major national security policies in the history 
of this country. And one sign of that is the consistently wrong 
predictions this administration has made.
  They said that when we went into Iraq and when they won the war, and 
the military part was won very easily, despite what President Bush had 
earlier said, he inherited from President Clinton a superb military 
regime that won easily the military parts of the efforts in both 
Afghanistan and Iraq. But we were told that once the military part was 
over, the people of Iraq would be so welcoming, that it would be fairly 
easy. Indeed, this administration punished General Shinseki for 
predicting that it would be a difficult occupation. And, of course, it 
was a very difficult occupation.
  But then we were told, well, when we capture Saddam Hussein that will 
take the energy out of the resistance and things will get calmer. And 
we captured Saddam Hussein, fortunately; but unfortunately things did 
not get better. And then we were told, well, we will turn over the 
government of Iraq to an Iraqi set of officials and then things will 
get better. And we turned over the government to an Iraqi set of 
officials and things have gotten worse.
  Now, we are accused by those who do not think debating public policy 
is appropriate in a democracy. Apparently, they have this very odd idea 
that the more important the issue, the less appropriate it is to debate 
it. Democracy in their minds should be conducted about trivia; but when 
we are talking about important issues of war and peace and the lives of 
our young people and the national security, somehow it becomes 
inappropriate to engage in the democratic debate that is at the nature 
of our governance.
  But we have an additional witness to the argument that Iraq remains 
sadly unsafe in many places for this government and its supporters, the 
United States government. And we are not just talking about Fallujah or 
the Sunni Triangle. We are talking about Baghdad. We recently had, and 
I read this in the New York Times last Thursday, a wire service 
article, the United States government last week, or at least I learned 
of it last week, recently gave asylum to a 15-year-old Iraqi girl who 
asked for asylum on the ground that her support for the American 
military made it unsafe for her to live in Baghdad.

[[Page 19589]]

  In other words, we now have an official recognition by the United 
States immigration officials that being a supporter of the American 
military in Baghdad is so dangerous as to justify the extraordinary act 
that is a grant of asylum. This is not critics of the administration 
saying that. This is not Fallujah. This is Baghdad. This is a sad 
statement, and I am terribly troubled by this. I am glad we gave this 
young woman asylum given those circumstances.
  A young woman who expressed her support for the American military now 
tells us that it is unsafe for her to go to Baghdad. Well, if in fact 
things are calmer, let us talk about an election. They are going to 
have an election throughout the country. Baghdad is one of the places 
where we are told things are fairly secure.
  Well, if it is secure enough to have a free election, why is it so 
insecure as to say that a 15-year-old has to be given asylum in the 
United States because it is not safe for her to remain in her own 
country because she sided with America.
  What is clear is that the result of the Bush administration's Iraqi 
policy has been a sad deterioration, in my view, of the true national 
security policy of this country; and the misinformation, the self-
delusion, the inaccuracy, the infighting, the inconsistency that have 
marked this policy have resulted in a very, very sad situation. And as 
long as the President and his chief advisors insist on defying reality 
and blaming the messengers who bring forward the evidence of this sad 
reality, it is unlikely that things will get better. The self-deluded 
are rarely the self-correcting.

               [From the New York Times, Sept. 23, 2004]

                     U.S. Asylum for Iraqi Girl, 15

       Washington--A 15-year-old Iraqi girl who claimed 
     persecution in Baghdad because her family cooperated with the 
     United States military has been granted political asylum 
     here. The case is believed to be among the first instances of 
     an Iraqi seeking political asylum in such circumstances.
       The girl and her mother, who asked not to be identified for 
     fear of retaliation against other family members still in 
     Iraq, received the letter on Thursday from the Citizenship 
     and Immigration Services, according to Jeff Sullivan, their 
     Washington lawyer. The girl came to the United States last 
     year with her mother for treatment of a cancerous growth in 
     her cervix. The two subsequently applied for political 
     asylum. The mother is pursuing asylum for the father and 
     three other children still in Baghdad, Mr. Sullivan said.

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