[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 15]
[House]
[Page 20045]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  (Ms. DeLAURO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, today's Washington Post tells us that the 
administration recently curtailed the distribution of reports by 
contractor Kroll Security International that show increasing violence 
in Iraq. The article goes on to say that the Pentagon is sponsoring a 
group of Iraqi Americans to speak at military bases throughout the 
United States to provide ``a firsthand account of events in Iraq.'' 
That is to say, the administration is sending Iraqi exiles, mostly 
people who may not have been to the country in years, to tell our 
troops just back from Iraq the ``good news'' about how things are going 
there.
  I imagine some of these exiles are the same people who told Deputy 
Defense Secretary Wolfowitz that we would be greeted as liberators upon 
arriving in Iraq. These are two more examples of an administration in 
denial of what is actually going on in Iraq, an administration unhinged 
from reality. If these emissaries of the administration were going to 
tell our troops the truth about Iraq, they would say that the 
international coalition is getting smaller, that our burden is getting 
larger, and our casualties are rising at an alarming rate.
  That is the reality in Iraq, the reality that our dedicated troops 
deserve to be told by those sending them into harm's way. The American 
public needs to know what is happening in Iraq. This administration is 
failing to do that.

                          ____________________