[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19050-19051]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      STRATEGY FOR SUCCESS IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) is recognized 
for 26 minutes.
  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I rise because what the gentleman 
from North Carolina (Mr. Price), my friend, has said is terribly 
important to be said. And what is even more important is that it be 
made available to the public at large.
  Mr. Speaker, I think it is important, appropriate, to inform the 
gentleman and the rest of the Congress who may not be aware that the 
elements of the strategy for success, the identical language which the 
minority leader, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), has 
requested in the form of an amendment, has actually been included in an 
appropriations bill, the Iraq supplemental appropriations bill, passed 
earlier this year.
  That language was included in an amendment that I submitted to the 
Iraq supplemental bill. It also included the benchmarks that the 
gentleman has suggested, as well as even more specific information. We 
have received that report on the strategy for success, Mr. Speaker.
  The most important elements of that report, in fact though, were 
included in an addendum which was classified. And so I and those who 
have seen the report are not at liberty to give the kind of specific 
information that at least I feel should be shared with the American 
public.
  But I would like to address what was in the body of the report, which 
does in part respond to the very specific questions, as to Iraq's 
military capability, its economic viability, and its political 
stability.
  The American people need to know whether in fact Iraq will ever be 
able to fully control its borders and provide security for its society 
and its economy. And we need to know how successful we have been in 
training and equipping Iraqi forces, because we have been working at 
that for more than 2 years.
  The American people also need to know what has happened to the tens 
of billions of dollars that we have appropriated for economic 
reconstruction.

                              {time}  1345

  Will Iraq ever be or is even close to being economically viable? Is 
its physical infrastructure in place so that its economy can rebound in 
a way that will provide economic opportunities for its population?
  The American people also need to know, in addition to where Iraq is 
in terms of military capabilities and economic viability, how stable 
its government can ever be and at what point will the decisionmakers, 
the policymakers in Washington decide that its governance is stable 
enough to be able to return Iraq over to a democracy that is worthy of 
our military efforts.
  Mr. Speaker, I oppose this war. I voted against it. I voted against 
most of the funding for it. I did vote for the Iraq supplemental 
because it included this language that I felt was vitally important, 
requiring what, while we do not call it an exit strategy, is certainly 
appropriately entitled ``a strategy for success.'' That language was 
included and could only have been included if it was offered in a 
bipartisan, nonpolitical context, without a whole lot of fanfare. But 
working with the majority we could get some answers to the questions 
that the American people, our constituents, are asking. We did not have 
those questions answered when we went to war.
  I opposed the war because I felt that it was unjustified. I knew that 
Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11. Suggestions 
to the contrary were a ruse. The reasons given were at best 
unjustified; at worst, deliberately deceptive.
  I also opposed it because as our senior military officers will tell 
you we ought not go to war without a plan to win the peace. We had no 
plan to win the peace. And, in fact, the 41st President of the United 
States, George Bush, when he had the opportunity to go into Baghdad and 
take out Saddam when we had Saddam's Republican Guard on the run, he 
chose not to do so because his advisors, understanding the country, 
acting with foresight and knowledge of the political context within the 
Middle East, were afraid that we would be thrust into the role of an 
occupier. And they knew, and I think were absolutely right, that the 
United States should never be playing the role of an occupier, but 
always that of a liberator. So they chose not to go to Baghdad. The son 
chose differently with very different people advising him, and I think 
for different reasons.
  But now that we are in Iraq, what do we do? That is what senior 
military officers are asking us. And it is certainly what the mothers 
and fathers of the young men and women who are fighting this war are 
demanding to know. They need to know what is our strategy. How long 
will we be there? How much more money is absolutely necessary to 
continue this military engagement? And they are getting none of those 
answers.
  Unfortunately, I cannot disclose any of the specific information that 
has now been provided, but I certainly can share, at least with my 
constituents, the fact that in my judgment we are

[[Page 19051]]

nowhere near being able to withdraw a substantial number of our troops 
in a responsible manner because, in my judgment, the Iraqi military is 
nowhere near being able to secure its borders. The Iraqi police forces 
are nowhere near being able to restore law and order in that country. 
The economic infrastructure is nowhere near being able to support a 
viable economy. And even the government is nowhere near being able to 
pass a Constitution that not just would be acceptable to the American 
people who have sacrificed so much to bring it about, but it is not 
even in the situation where it would be enduring and accepted by the 
vast majority of the Iraqi people.
  Mr. Speaker, we are in a quagmire here. We need answers. We need 
answers from the people who put us in that quagmire. It is wrong to 
continue to be sending troops to a war that is this unwinnable, Mr. 
Speaker.
  Now, I suspect what is going to happen, and it was further confirmed 
yesterday by the Secretary and by some of the senior military officers 
who have been in a consultation with them, that we will start a 
substantial withdrawal. But I think that withdrawal, I feel that 
withdrawal will be motivated more for political reasons than for 
military or foreign policy reasons. We have our fist in the middle of a 
beehive, and we are getting stung. The advisors that sent us there are 
not getting stung because they figure they can say or do anything to 
avoid repercussions and accountability. But, boy, our young men and 
women are being stung every day.
  We need to figure out how to extricate in a way that is responsible 
and will justify their sacrifice. We cannot cut and run. And yet the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), one of the most respected 
Members of the House, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Defense 
of the Committee on Appropriations, is afraid and, in fact, predicts 
that is what we will do, and we will do it for political reasons, not 
for substantive policy reasons.
  We need to get more countries involved in a real way, not in a way so 
that with a few troops they can list their participation. We need to go 
through international bodies like the North Atlantic Treaty 
Organization, NATO. We need to work with the United Nations, which we 
continue to bash and beat up on and scapegoat for our own problems in 
terms of our credibility throughout the world. We need to get the rest 
of the world involved because the rest of the world had a stake here in 
getting rid of a ruthless dictator, in restoring stability in Iraq, in 
giving Iraq some ability to seize control of its own destiny, but in a 
way that it chooses. That is what we should be about.
  We should not be about, in my estimate, spending hundreds of millions 
of dollars to build an American Embassy in Baghdad that only serves to 
confirm what our enemies are telling their recruits, that we are there 
for the long run; that we are there as occupiers; that we are there to 
take advantage of their oil reserves; to exploit Iraq's resources, and 
to exploit its people for our own political purposes. They are wrong, 
but we have to prove that they are wrong.
  We have to show the world that we have a strategy for success, a 
responsible one. It will leave Iraq in better shape than before we 
entered it. We never, as I said, should have entered, but now we have a 
responsibility to fix it before we leave. And that strategy for 
success, as I say, Mr. Speaker, is not going to be achieved 
unilaterally. It is going to have to be achieved by working with the 
rest of the world in an international context, letting the Iraqi people 
control their own destiny, not dictating to them.
  As much as I would love for us to hand them a Constitution that made 
us feel good about what we have accomplished, I do not think that is 
going to work. They have to own that Constitution. I pray to God that 
they will not exclude women, that they will not continue some of the 
arcane habits, the laws and the regulations that only serve to support 
religious clerics and a very conservative, even extremist in some 
cases, religious system of governance, but, in fact, will open it up to 
a true democracy where both men and women can fully participate a free 
enterprise, an uncorrupted economy, and, in fact, a strong military and 
police force that will provide the security to the Iraqi people that 
they have not had in generations.
  That has got to be our objective. We cannot achieve it on our own. We 
have got to work with the rest of the world. We have got to sit down 
and maybe even eat a little humble pie and come up with an 
international solution for this, and to not require our soldiers to 
bear the brunt of the injuries and the death that they have.
  Changing Iraq's leadership was more in the interest of so many other 
countries than it was in America's interest. We went because we had the 
ability to go, and I am afraid there was some political motivation 
involved as well. But now that we are there, we in the Congress need to 
require of the executive branch that they give us the answers, that 
they share with us and then to the American people, they need to share 
with the American people what is their plan, what is their strategy for 
success. And if they do not do that, there will be political 
accountability as there ought to be.
  Mr. Speaker, the report that we received 2 weeks late, but that we 
did finally receive 2 weeks ago, is an important first step, but it is 
grossly inadequate. The language that I put in the appropriations bill 
several months ago required a 90-day update. Every one of those updates 
needs to be more specific, needs to be fleshed out better than the 
prior reports. And most importantly, Mr. Speaker, it needs to be shared 
with the American public. It is their money. It is their sons and 
daughters. That is what this war, unfortunately, is about, from their 
standpoint.
  How do you make this worth the effort? How do you succeed in a way 
that their sons and daughters can be proud of what they contributed and 
the risk they undertook? The administration owes that to them. We will 
continue to insist that it provides that information, not in a 
classified document that can be kept from the public's eyes and ears, 
but within a spirit of full disclosure. And if they do not have a plan 
that will work, they need to come up with one.
  They need to consult with the rest of the world, be willing to work 
with the legislative branch, with our other allies and even those we do 
not consider allies. It is in this planet's interest to bring about a 
free world, a safe world for its future generations.
  So I ask the administration that has been twice elected to do the 
right thing, to get us out of Iraq, but to get us out in a way that we 
can turn back knowing that we have accomplished something that was 
deserving of the sacrifice, the loss, the risk that our best young men 
and women have been willing to undertake.

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