[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23593-23594]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         THE SITUATION IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, to find out how chaotic, how messed up the 
situation in Iraq is, all you need to do is read the front page of 
yesterday's Washington Post. The top headline said, ``Trouble Spots Dot 
Iraqi Landscape.'' The subhead read: ``Attacks erupting away from 
Fallujah.''
  The story says:
  ``The fighting started in Mosul 2 days after U.S. tanks entered 
Fallujah. Armed men appeared in a sudden tide on a main street in 
Iraq's third largest city, a wide avenue where so many American convoys 
had been ambushed that locals nicknamed it `Death Street.'
  ``At 11 a.m. Thursday, the target was an armored SUV. Witnesses said 
that after its Western passengers were chased into a police station, 
the driver was burned alive atop the vehicle as the attackers shouted, 
`Jew!' The city of 1.8 million people then devolved into chaos. 
Thousands of police officers abandoned their precinct houses. The 
governor's house was set alight. Insurgents took the police chief's 
brother, himself a senior officer, into his front yard and shot him 
dead.

[[Page 23594]]

  ``By Sunday, the dawn of a 3-day festival celebrating the end of 
Ramadan, control over sections of the city remained in doubt. In 
streets emptied by fear and gunfire, insurgents battled hundreds of 
Iraqi National Guard reinforcements dispatched by the interim 
government to quell an uprising that was at once largely expected and 
disquieting.''
  This is a story about fighting in Mosul.
  U.S. troops have taken control of Fallujah, but the insurgents have 
simply moved out to fight alongside supporters in several other Iraqi 
cities. At least 38 additional U.S. troops have been killed and at 
least 320 more wounded in this most recent fighting.
  Fortune magazine, Mr. Speaker, in its November 25, 2002 edition, a 
couple of months before the war started, had an article entitled 
``Iraq--We Win--What Then?'' The Fortune article said:
  ``A military victory could turn into a strategic defeat. A prolonged, 
expensive, American-led occupation could turn U.S. troops into sitting 
ducks for Islamic terrorists.'' How right this article was.
  James Webb, a hero in Vietnam and President Reagan's Secretary of the 
Navy, wrote in The Washington Post before the war: ``The issue before 
us is not whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam 
Hussein but whether we as a Nation are prepared to occupy territory in 
the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years.'' Secretary Webb was 
strongly opposed to such an occupation.
  Charley Reese, the very popular conservative columnist, wrote, again 
before the war: ``Just let the United States try to occupy the Middle 
East, which will be the practical result of a war against Iraq, and 
Americans will be bled dry by the costs both in blood and treasure.''
  A few months ago, our own government took a poll and found that 92 
percent of Iraqis regard us as occupiers rather than liberators. These 
people really do not appreciate what we have done for them. No one can 
legitimately criticize our troops, and I certainly would not. They are 
simply following orders and doing a great job. But when people say we 
made a mistake going in there but now that we are there we have to 
stay, we have to get the job done, that is like saying we know we are 
going the wrong way down the interstate, but we have to keep going 
anyway. I think you get off at the next exit.
  We should announce to the world that we have done far more than any 
other nation has done for another country in the history of the world. 
We have spent almost $200 billion, more than 90 percent of the money 
and casualties have been American, but we really cannot help any more 
until Iraqis stop killing our young soldiers and stop blowing each 
other up. That is what we should announce.
  For those who say Iraq would go into chaos if we leave, they should 
read yesterday's Washington Post. The chaos is already there.
  Columnist Georgie Anne put it best: ``Critics of the war against Iraq 
have said since the beginning of the conflict that Americans, still 
strangely complacent about overseas wars being waged by a minority in 
their name, will inevitably come to a point where they will see they 
have to have a government that provides services at home or one that 
seeks empire across the globe.''

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