[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7137-7138]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   MISTAKES MADE IN THE WAR WITH IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, in the last press conference, the 
President was asked if he had made any mistakes and what lessons had he 
learned. And what the President said was, I wish you had given me this 
written question ahead of time so I could plan for it. I am sure 
historians will look back and say, gosh, he could have done it better 
this way or that way. I am just not sure something will pop into my 
head here in the midst of this press conference with all the pressure 
of trying to come up with an answer, but it has not yet.
  So kind of as a public service, a number of us are coming down to the 
floor to offer, for the President's consideration, a list of some 
mistakes that he might want to call up so he does not have to fumble 
around for an answer at the next press conference, if he has another 
public press conference.
  One of the things that actually is surprising to me that this mistake 
happened at all, given what we know now, is the long lead-up to the war 
in Iraq, that they actually had been planning, and bases were being 
built, and air space to land was being constructed, was a failure to 
provide the troops with the protection they needed when they were put 
into harm's way. It surprises me that that mistake was made.
  In some cases mistakes have been somewhat corrected, we think; so it 
would not even hurt the President to mention the fact that as recently 
as

[[Page 7138]]

last October, a quarter of our troops in Iraq were lacking in the 
ceramic-plated body armor that would deflect the bullets that were 
coming their way. We are told that that has been corrected, although as 
recently as just a few weeks ago, families are still buying those at 
about $1,500 a crack for their soldiers just to make sure that they are 
well equipped. But we know that still the Humvees do not have the 
proper armor, some of them still do not have the proper armor. A 
helicopter was shot down that did not have the missile detector that 
helicopters are supposed to have in order to be fully equipped.

                              {time}  1345

  I met the aunt of one of the soldiers who died in that last Sunday. 
She would think that that was a mistake that the President made and 
something he might want to mention.
  He could have talked about a mistake making soldiers pay for their 
travel home when they would come on rest and recreation, R&R. In order 
to get to their homes once they were landed in the U.S., they were 
paying their own way. That, I understand, has been corrected.
  Or we just heard yesterday from the 333rd Military Police Unit in 
Freeport that was supposed to be coming home this week, that in fact 
they got redeployed; but all their equipment, their personal foot 
lockers, had been sent home, and now the families, at their own 
expense, are shipping the equipment back to their soldiers. They are 
having to buy all new uniforms. It seems that was a mistake in 
planning, according to some of the families. Maybe they could have 
planned better. That is a mistake, and it could be corrected somewhat, 
at least to reimburse the families that are having to ship back.
  But it is not just those soldiers that are in harm's way, who are 
losing their lives now, unfortunately, sadly, horribly, in record 
numbers in the last little while; but it is the veterans. Again, it is 
astonishing that this President would not make sure that at the very 
least those who come home are well taken care of.
  There was a mistake, and it has been corrected. He could cite that. 
Our wounded soldiers were being charged for food at the hospitals when 
they came home. Incredible. Now that has been fixed; they are not being 
charged for that food. But many were languishing with inadequate care 
in Army barracks when they came home.
  Then, right now, this minute, 30,000 veterans are waiting 6 months or 
longer for appointments at VA hospitals, new increases are proposed in 
the cost of veterans health care for up to 1 million veterans, and 
long-term care funding has been slashed. It is really incredible.
  What the veterans organizations are saying is that actually the 
amount of money allocated to veterans is millions of dollars short of 
what it needs to be. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) actually 
has a proposal that would add $2.5 billion for veterans health care. 
The President could acknowledge that it is a mistake to mistreat our 
veterans, and he could support the bill of the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. Edwards) to restore that money.
  He could do something about the fact that he has been refusing to end 
the survivor benefit penalty. There are a lot of things, a lot of 
mistakes. We think the President ought to acknowledge some of them and 
fix them up.

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