[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 22016-22017]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            BUSH IRAQ POLICY

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I have seen the television reports and the 
newspaper articles, and I have spoken with people who recently returned 
from Iraq. I have seen the escalating violence and the chaos that has 
engulfed parts of that country.
  And like all Americans I have watched the death toll of our young men 
and women in uniform pass 1000. It is now more than 1050, with many 
thousands more who have been grievously wounded.
  Yet to hear the President and Vice President talk, one would think 
that everything is going well. The President uses words like ``freedom 
is winning'' and ``we're making steady progress.''
  There is no question that all of us here wish that were true, but 
unfortunately the rosy picture that the President paints on the 
campaign trail is misleading and wildly off base.
  Even worse, the President's statements are contradicted by 
knowledgeable officials in his Administration, by leading Republicans 
in the Senate, and by a growing number of national security experts 
within his own administration.
  Here are a few examples: Secretary of State Powell said that the 
situation in Iraq is ``getting worse.'' General Abizaid, the top U.S. 
military commander in Iraq, said ``[w]e're going to have to fight our 
way all the way through elections,'' he said, ``and there'll be a lot 
of violence between now and then.'' Senator Hagel said ``The fact is, 
we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble in Iraq.'' And, according to a 
recent article in the Washington Post, a lengthening list of career 
military, intelligence and State Department officials believe that Iraq 
is a mess and things are getting even worse, raising the specter of 
civil war.
  Faced with mounting evidence that things are going from bad to worse 
in Iraq, what does the President do?
  First, he attacks the messenger of the bad news by calling the 
National Intelligence Estimate ``just guessing.'' Next, he ignores the 
problem by repeating the same old platitudes and wildly-optimistic 
rhetoric. Then he and his political allies accuse those who dare to 
disagree of giving aid and comfort to the terrorists. When all else 
fails, the President engages in a time-honored tradition here in 
Washington: He changes the subject and deflects attention.
  This President and Vice-President are masters at changing the 
subject. They have attacked John Kerry's distinguished military record, 
even though neither of them saw combat and many others in the 
administration used family connections or deferments to avoid military 
service altogether. In fact, when asked about serving in Vietnam Vice 
President Cheney said that he ``had other priorities in the military 
service.''
  Imagine what the President's campaign would be saying if John Kerry 
had said that.
  Why do the President and Vice-President constantly change the subject 
when asked to explain why things are going so badly in Iraq? The answer 
is simple. They have been consistently wrong about Iraq, and the 
results speak for themselves.
  The President was wrong about weapons of mass destruction, which cut 
short the U.N. weapons inspections and got us into Iraq in the first 
place. The Duelfer report found that Iraq got rid of its weapons of 
mass destruction more than a decade ago, that Saddam Hussein did not 
have the means to develop a nuclear weapon, and that the U.N. 
inspections were working. Yet the White House insists that this 
devastating report by its own export somehow supports the President's 
decision to go to war.
  The Vice President was wrong about our being greeted as liberators. 
Think about that statement, and compare it to the daily--actually, 
hourly--attacks against our troops in Iraq today.
  The President was wrong about ``mission accomplished.'' More than 900 
Americans have died since that famous photo op on the aircraft carrier.
  The President was not only wrong, but it is hard to imagine what he 
was thinking, when he told the insurgents in Iraq to ``bring it on.''
  The President was wrong about Iraqi oil revenues paying for the 
reconstruction. It is American taxpayers who are paying most of the 
costs.
  And the President acts as if everything is on track for Iraqi 
elections in January even as the insurgency grows steadily worse and 
Secretary Rumsfeld is talking about holding elections in only parts of 
the country.
  Despite being consistently wrong, the President's strategy stays the 
same--put the best face on it, insist that everything is going 
according to plan even though there is no plan, and attack the 
patriotism of anyone who dares to question or to criticize.
  They have tried to keep the media from publishing photographs of the 
planeloads of flag-draped coffins of Americans who have died in Iraq.
  They rarely even mention the casualties--American or Iraqi--since 
that, of

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course, would mean having to acknowledge the terrible price that is 
being paid day after day.
  They treated the Abu Ghraib prison scandal as an aberration--the work 
of a few rogue recruits.
  They have done their best to hide the policies to subvert the law 
that were approved at the highest levels of government, and the fact 
that Abu Ghraib was only one of several locations where foreign 
prisoners were humiliated, tortured, denied the most basic human 
rights, and even murdered.
  They shut down distribution of a key security report, issued daily by 
a U.S. contractor--which U.S. personnel in Iraq have relied on for 
their own safety--because the news of escalating violence in these 
reports did not square with the spin being put out by the Pentagon and 
the White House.
  Just as the President ignored those who predicted the widening anti-
American insurgency, he has sugar-coated the rebuilding of Iraq.
  A year ago, he asked the Congress to appropriate $19 billion 
immediately, in fact so immediately that he resisted every amendment 
designed to ensure the aid dollars would be well spent.
  The President opposed my amendment to put Secretary Powell in charge 
of the reconstruction in Iraq, causing the Department of Defense to run 
the biggest nation-building venture since the Marshall Plan. And they 
bungled it miserably.
  The President opposed an amendment that would have at least required 
that the aid be paid for out of the President's tax cuts for the 
wealthiest Americans--not left for our children and grandchildren.
  The President opposed an amendment that would have created tough 
criminal penalties for war profiteering in Iraq.
  The President refused to consider any alternative approaches. His 
attitude was ``my way or the highway.'' And look at what a mess it has 
gotten us into. It has been nearly a year since the Iraq supplemental 
was signed into law, and only $1 billion of the $19 billion has been 
spent.
  Of those funds, it is estimated that only 27 cents of every dollar 
has gone to benefit the Iraqi people. The rest has ended up in the 
pockets of high-priced contractors and consultants, and to pay for 
insurance and security and other overhead costs.
  There are serious consequences resulting from this administration's 
handling of the chaos in Iraq. One, which all Senators are increasingly 
hearing about from our constituents, is the possibility of a return to 
the draft. If Iraq continues on its downward spiral, there is growing 
concern that it may be necessary at some point to reinstate military 
conscription. I oppose returning to a military draft, I do not believe 
it is necessary, and I believe it would lessen our military 
effectiveness.
  Yet the President needs to acknowledge to the American people that 
our entire military forces, including the active Army, the Reserves, 
and the National Guard, are stretched very thin right now because of 
the choices the President has made. The military is finding it 
difficult to get new recruits and has resorted to a backdoor draft, 
forcing personnel to remain in the service through so-called stop-loss 
orders.
  The Pentagon at some point might decide that the only way to find new 
recruits--unless we pursue more sensible policies--would be through a 
draft. I sincerely hope not. This is only one of the many examples of 
the life-and-death choices that the Nation faces in prudently 
allocating our resources to combat terrorism.
  A lot has been said about President Bush's consistency. His campaign 
advertisements boast that he is a strong leader because he `says what 
he means and he does what he says.'
  What good is consistency when it means sending 140,000 Americans into 
a guerrilla war in a foreign land fueled by religious and ethnic 
hatred, without justification?
  What good is consistency when it means spending upwards of $200 
billion on a policy that has not made us any safer, and that has turned 
Iraq into a haven for terrorists eager to kill Americans who they see 
as foreign invaders out to destroy Islam itself?
  What good is consistency when it squanders the good will that we need 
to effectively fight terrorism, to build a real coalition so the United 
States is not paying 90 percent of the cost and suffering 90 percent of 
the casualties?
  What good is consistency, when all it really amounts to is hollow 
rhetoric that bears no relationship to the facts?
  The President and Vice-President have been consistent alright--
consistently wrong. There is no value in that.
  The President and Vice President constantly assert that we need to 
`stay the course.' My answer to that is that if you are captain of the 
ship and you are heading for an iceberg, you change course. You want to 
get to the same destination, but you do not want to plow into the 
iceberg to get there.
  It is this President's rigid adherence to a misguided ideology that 
has gotten us into deep, deep trouble in Iraq.
  The American people deserve better. They deserve competence and they 
deserve honesty. They deserve leaders who know the difference between a 
political decision, and the right decision.

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