[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2330-2331]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  SMART SECURITY AND IRAQ'S ELECTIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, I am beginning to lose count of the number 
of reasons why we went to war in Iraq. First it was because Saddam 
Hussein was closely linked to al Qaeda, the terrorist group that 
conducted the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11.
  After that theory was disproved, the reason for going to war became 
the imminent and immediate threat that Saddam posed to the United 
States. According to the White House, Saddam possessed stockpiles of 
nuclear and biological weapons.
  When we learned that Saddam's nuclear weapons program had actually 
been dismantled after the 1991 Gulf War, which was a full 12 years ago 
when the U.S. began its first invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration 
changed its rationale yet again. This time the reason for going to war 
was for the very cause of democracy itself, to bring democracy to the 
Iraqi people.
  Some have said that Iraq's recent elections are the very embodiment 
of Iraq's quick embrace of democracy. It is important right now to 
commend the brave 58 percent of registered Iraqis who voted in these 
elections, voted to select the legislators who will write the Iraqi 
constitution.
  In fact, Iraq's voter turnout was higher than the turnout in most 
American elections. Believe me, the people who live in my congressional 
district, Marin and Sonoma Counties, north of San Francisco, across the 
Golden Gate Bridge, know how important elections are to keeping a 
viable and vital democracy in a country. In last November's election, 
we voted with a record 89.5 percent of registered voters turning out.
  Sadly, despite Iraq's elections, the Middle East is as unstable as it 
has ever been. The war in Iraq has made Iraq a more violent and 
unstable place, making America less secure from the threat of terrorism 
by creating a terrorist breeding ground in a country that had never 
been a haven for terrorist groups like al Qaeda in the first place.

[[Page 2331]]

  Some members of the Bush administration have expressed their 
disappointment with the high Shiite turnout of Iraq's elections, 
fearing that significant participation by religious Muslims may lead to 
the creation of an overly religious Iraqi constitution, but that is the 
danger, the danger risked by invading a country when you will not admit 
the real reason you are there in the first place.
  Are we there to stabilize Iraq so we can control their oil resources? 
Are we there to force our notions of democracy onto the Iraqi people? 
Or are we there to honor the Iraqi voters, voters who went to the polls 
because they want to control their own destiny?
  The most important thing to recognize is that Iraq will not resemble 
the United States, and Iraq's constitution will not be an updated 
version of our own. Mr. Speaker, it has become clear that we cannot 
keep our troops stationed halfway around the world with the hope that 
Iraq will become a Middle Eastern version of the United States.
  But the elections do demonstrate that the Iraqi people are prepared 
to manage their own affairs. That is why, now that Iraq's elections are 
completed, the United States must ensure that the people of Iraq 
control their own affairs as the country transitions towards democracy.
  We can do this by supporting the Iraqi people, not through our 
military, but through international cooperation to help rebuild Iraq's 
economic and physical infrastructure.
  We owe this to the people of Iraq, who are being killed by the 
thousands. We owe it to our troops who are sitting ducks for the 
terrorists, and we owe it to the nearly 1,500 American troops who have 
died in this ill-conceived misadventure, as well as the 11,000 who have 
been severely wounded.
  To help the situation in Iraq, I have introduced H. Con. Res. 35, 
which is legislation that will help Iraq secure its own future and 
ensure that America's role in Iraq actually does make America safer. So 
far, 27 of my House colleagues have signed on as cosponsors of this 
important legislation.
  My plan for Iraq is part of a larger strategy that I call SMART 
security, which is a Sensible Multilateral American Response to 
Terrorism that will ensure America's security by relying on smarter 
politics.
  Mr. Speaker, let me be clear; we should not abandon Iraq. There is 
still a critical role for the United States in providing the 
developmental aid that can help create a robust civil society, build 
schools and water processing plants, and ensure that Iraq's economic 
infrastructure becomes fully viable.
  Instead of troops, we need to send scientists, educators, urban 
planners and constitutional experts to help rebuild Iraq's flagging 
economic and physical infrastructure.

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