[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 21316-21317]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 THIRTEEN REASONS WHY AMERICA IS NOT SAFER BECAUSE OF PRESIDENT BUSH'S 
                             FOREIGN POLICY

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it was a Presidential election campaign 
24 years ago when Ronald Reagan posed the defining question to the 
American people in that election when he asked, Are you better off 
today than you were 4 years ago? That basic question has greater 
relevance now than when Ronald Reagan asked it.
  The defining issue today is our national security. Especially in this 
post-September 11 world, people have the right to ask Ronald Reagan's 
question in a very specific and all-important way: Are we safer today 
because of the policies of President Bush?
  Any honest assessment can lead to only one answer and that answer is 
an emphatic no. President Bush is dead wrong and John Kerry is 
absolutely right: We are not safer today.
  The reason we are not safer is because of President Bush's misguided 
war in Iraq. The President's handling of the war has been a toxic mix 
of ignorance, arrogance, and stubborn ideology. No amount of 
Presidential rhetoric or preposterous campaign spin can conceal the 
truth about the steady downward spiral in our national security since 
President Bush made the decision to go to war in Iraq.
  President Bush keeps saying that America and the world are safer and 
better off today because Saddam Hussein is gone. No matter how many 
rhetorical, double-twisting back flips President Bush performs, his 
disingenuous claim that the war has made America safer is wrong--and 
may be catastrophically wrong.
  There were no weapons of mass destruction.
  Across the country we see the newspapers with headlines like this 
morning's Washington Post headline: ``U.S. `Almost All Wrong' on 
Weapons.'' There were no weapons. Here it is in the New York Times this 
morning: ``U.S. Report Finds Iraqis Eliminated Illicit Arms in 90's.'' 
``Weapons Capability Had Eroded Before War, Inspector Says.''
  Here is the recent report, just released yesterday, by the inspector 
general, who is over there, Charles Duelfer, who followed Dr. Kay. Very 
professional individuals with strong teams have spent up to $900 
million. This is the central conclusion on page 7:

       Iraq did not possess a nuclear device, nor had it tried to 
     reconstitute a capability to produce nuclear weapons after 
     1991.

  Again, in a New York Times editorial this morning entitled ``The 
Verdict Is In'':

       Since any objective observer should by now have digested 
     the idea that Iraq posed no immediate threat to anyone, let 
     alone the United States, it was disturbing to hear President 
     Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney continue to try to 
     justify the invasion this week on the grounds that after 
     Sept. 11, 2001, Iraq was clearly the most likely place for 
     terrorists to get illicit weapons. Even if Mr. Hussein had 
     wanted to arm groups he could not control--a very dubious 
     notion--he had nothing to give them.

  Those are the facts, Mr. President. And it is important for the 
administration to finally admit them. Saddam had no nuclear program. He 
had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq Survey Group 
basically nailed the door shut on the administration's justification 
for the war. But the President won't hear it. He stubbornly clings to 
his fiction that ``there was a real risk that Saddam Hussein would pass 
weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks.''
  President Bush says John Kerry ``would weaken America and make the 
world more dangerous.'' In fact, it is President Bush who has weakened 
America and made the world more dangerous. Let's count the ways George 
Bush's war has not made America safer.
  No. 1, Iraq has been a constant perilous distraction from the real 
war on terrorism. There was no persuasive link between Saddam Hussein 
and al-Qaida. We should have finished the job in Afghanistan, finished 
the job on al-Qaida, and finished the job on Osama bin Laden.
  No. 2, the mismanagement of the war in Iraq has created a fertile, 
new, and very dangerous breeding ground for terrorists in Iraq and a 
powerful recruiting tool for al-Qaida that did not exist before the 
war. We cannot go a day now without hearing of attacks in Iraq by 
insurgents and al-Qaida terrorists, and our troops are in far greater 
danger because of it.
  Only this week, Ambassador Paul Bremer specifically stated that the 
Bush administration erred in not deploying enough troops in Iraq and 
not containing the violence and looting immediately after the fall of 
Saddam Hussein. About the looting, he said:

       We paid a big price for not stopping it because it 
     established an atmosphere of lawlessness.

  He said:

       We never had enough troops on the ground.

  No. 3, Saddam may be behind bars, and that is a plus for America and 
the world, as President Bush says. But the war in Iraq has clearly 
distracted us from putting Osama bin Laden behind bars, and that is a 
huge minus.
  No. 4, because of the war in Iraq, the danger of terrorist attacks 
against America itself has become far greater. Our preoccupation with 
Iraq has given al-Qaida more than 2 full years to regroup and plan 
murderous new assaults against us. And we know that al-Qaida will try 
to attack America again and again here at home, if it possibly can. Yet 
instead of staying focused on the real war on terror, President Bush 
rushed headlong into an unnecessary war in Iraq.
  No. 5, and most ominously, the Bush administration's focus on Iraq 
has left us needlessly more vulnerable to an al-Qaida attack with a 
nuclear weapon. The greatest threat of all to our homeland is a nuclear 
attack. A mushroom cloud over any American city is the ultimate 
nightmare, and the risk is all too great. Osama bin Laden calls the 
acquisition of a nuclear device a ``religious duty.'' Documents 
captured from a key al-Qaida aide 3 years ago revealed plans even then 
to smuggle high-grade radioactive materials into the United States in 
shipping containers.
  No. 6, the war in Iraq has provided a powerful new worldwide 
recruiting tool for al-Qaida. We know al-Qaida is getting stronger, 
because its attacks in other parts of the world are increasing.
  No. 7, because of the war, Afghanistan itself is still unstable. 
Taliban and al-Qaida elements continue to attack our forces regularly. 
President Hamid Karzai is frequently forced to negotiate with warlords 
who control private armies in the tens of thousands. Opium

[[Page 21317]]

production is at a record level, and is being used to finance terrorism 
and fund private militias. Our troops there are in greater danger.
  No. 8, we have alienated long-time friends and leaders in other 
nations we heavily depend on for intelligence, for apprehending 
terrorists, for shutting off funds to al-Qaida, and for many other 
types of support in the ongoing war against international terrorism. 
Mistrust of America has soared throughout the world. We are especially 
hated in the Muslim world. In parts of it, the bottom has fallen out.
  Sadly, we remember the goodwill that flowed to America in the 
aftermath of September 11, and we know we should never have squandered 
it.
  No. 9, our overall military forces are stretched to the breaking 
point because of the war in Iraq. As the Defense Science Board recently 
told Secretary Rumsfeld:

       Current and projected force structure will not sustain our 
     current and projected global stabilization commitments.

  LTG John Riggs said it clearly:

       I have been in the Army 39 years, and I've never seen the 
     Army as stretched in that 39 years as I have today.

  And as our colleague Senator McCain warned last month, if we have a 
problem in some other flash point in the world:

       It's clear, at least to most observers, that we don't have 
     sufficient personnel.

  No. 10, the war in Iraq has undermined the basic rule of 
international law that protects captured Americans. The Geneva 
Conventions are supposed to protect our forces, but the brutal 
interrogation techniques used at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have lowered 
the bar for treatment of POWs and endangered our soldiers throughout 
the world.
  No. 11, while President Bush has been preoccupied with Iraq, not just 
one but two serious nuclear threats have been rising: North Korea and 
Iran. Four years ago, North Korea's plutonium program was inactive. Its 
nuclear rods were under seal. Two years ago, as the Iraq debate became 
intense, North Korea expelled the international inspectors and began 
turning its fuel rods into nuclear weapons. At the beginning of the 
Bush administration, North Korea was already thought to have two such 
weapons. Now they may have eight, and the danger is greater.
  Iran too is now on a faster track that could produce nuclear weapons. 
The international community might be more willing to act if President 
Bush had not abused the U.N. resolution on Iraq 2 years ago, when he 
took the words ``serious consequences'' as a license for launching his 
unilateral war in Iraq.
  No. 12, while we focused on the nonexistent nuclear threat from 
Saddam, we have not done enough to safeguard the vast amounts of 
unsecured nuclear materials elsewhere in the world. According to a 
joint report by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Harvard's Managing 
the Atom Project, ``scores of nuclear terrorist opportunities lie in 
wait in countries all around the world,'' especially at sites in the 
former Soviet Union. How loudly does the alarm bell have to ring before 
President Bush wakes up?
  No. 13, the neglect of the Bush administration on all aspects of 
homeland security because of the war is frightening. We are pouring 
nearly $5 billion a month into Iraq, yet we are grossly shortchanging 
the urgent needs to strengthen our ability to prevent terrorist attacks 
here at home and to strengthen our preparedness should they occur.
  As former Republican Senator Warren Rudman, chairman of the 
Independent Task Force on Emergency Responders, said recently:

       Homeland security is terribly under-funded, and we cannot 
     allow that to continue.

  You cannot pack all these reasons why America is not safer into a 30-
second television response ad or a news story or an editorial. But as 
anyone who cares about the issue can quickly learn, our President has 
utterly no credibility when he keeps telling us that America and the 
world are safer because he went to war in Iraq and rid us of Saddam.
  President Bush's record on Iraq is clearly costing American lives and 
endangering America and the world. Our President will not change or 
even admit how wrong he has been and still is. Despite the long line of 
mistakes and blunders and outright deception, there has been no 
accountability. As election day grows closer, the buck is circling more 
and more closely over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Only a new President 
can right the extraordinary wrongs of the Bush administration on our 
foreign policy and national security.
  On November 2, when we ask ourselves the fundamental question whether 
President Bush has made us safer, there can be only one answer: No, he 
has not. That is why America needs new leadership. We could have been, 
and should have been, much safer than we are today.
  We cannot afford to stay this very dangerous course. As I have said 
before, the only thing America has to fear is 4 more years of George 
Bush.
  I withhold the remainder of the time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Murkowski). Without objection, the 
remainder of the time is reserved.
  The Senator from Iowa.

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