[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23636-23637]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    PRICE-MILLER RESOLUTION ON IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Sodrel). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Mr. PRICE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Price-Miller 
resolution, which we have introduced today, to require the President to 
submit to Congress a plan for the withdrawal of United States troops 
from Iraq in the wake of the October 15 constitutional referendum, 
beginning with an initial drawdown.
  This is not a requirement I propose lightly. As many in this Chamber 
and in my home State know, I have been an outspoken critic of the Bush 
administration's policies in Iraq, and I voted against giving the 
President authority to invade Iraq, regarding it as an abdication of 
congressional responsibility.
  I have supported funding for troops in the field and for Iraqi 
reconstruction, while calling for an exit strategy, including 
benchmarks to which the administration should be held accountable, and 
major policy changes that would increase the probability of achieving 
at least some of our goals.
  But there is no evidence that President Bush has heeded anyone who 
does not accept his glib assurances and his stay-the-course rhetoric. 
As a result, the mistakes that have marred this effort from the 
beginning, poor or nonexistent planning, for example, and weak 
international participation, have been compounded.
  Such failures must not become a rationale for extending our 
occupation of Iraq. In fact, our presence itself is a target of the 
insurgents and a magnet for international terrorists. And it may be 
encouraging some elements of the Iraqi leadership to defer essential 
decisions and compromises that are necessary if their country is to 
assume responsibility for its own future.
  So we must leave. How we leave does matter: in a away that spares the 
lives of American troops and Iraqi noncombatants, in a way that 
minimizes the chance that Iraq will descend into massacres, ethnic 
cleansing or civil war, and in a way that maximizes the

[[Page 23637]]

chances for Iraqi self-defense and self-government.
  But we must end the occupation, and the approval of the Constitution 
offers us an opportunity to begin that process. It is an opportunity we 
must seize. There are no guarantees in this enterprise. Iraq could rise 
to this challenge with the Kurds and the Shia more fully accommodating 
the essential interests of Sunnis in changes to the Constitution early 
next year, based on input from a newly elected Sunni Parliament after 
December, or Iraq could further descend into sectarian violence.
  Our country cannot absolve ourselves of responsibility for creating 
this quagmire, or for helping avoid the worst-case possibilities going 
forward, but we must understand, and the President must tell the world 
we understand, that a sustained American military presence is not part 
of the solution. It is not feasible. In some ways it exacerbates the 
difficulties, and it must be ended.
  Our resolution draws in concept and content on one introduced in the 
Senate by Mr. Feingold on June 14. It updates that resolution by taking 
explicit account of the constitutional referendum and proposing an 
initial immediate drawdown of troops.
  Mr. Speaker, we should never have started this war. We should have 
and could have utilized other means of containing and controlling 
whatever threat Saddam Hussein represented. No ideal option is 
available to us now in ending it, but the October 15 vote offers the 
best opportunity we are likely to have to begin the process of 
withdrawal credibly, and hopefully to turn the responsibility for 
Iraq's future over to the Iraqis themselves, and to repair the 
diplomacy and foreign policy from which the invasion of Iraq has been 
such a tragic departure for our country.

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