[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10388-10389]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2115
                     THE DAY HAS COME TO EXIT IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Marchant). Under a previous order of

[[Page 10389]]

the House, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, in this week's Conservative Chronicle, 
William F. Buckley has a column entitled ``Day has come to Exit Iraq.''
  He refers to the U.S. casualty figures, now over 1,600 dead and 
11,000 wounded, and we continue to lose about 50 dead a month, and 
says, ``Moreover, the Iraqi deaths have increased substantially since 
the national election in January.''
  Mr. Buckley writes, ``We are entitled to say to ourselves: If the 
bloodletting is to go on, it can do so without our involvement in it.''
  He adds, ``The day has come where we say that our part of the job is 
done as well as it can be done. It is Iraq's responsibility to move on 
to wherever Iraq intends to go.''
  Of course, several months ago, Mr. Buckley said that if he known in 
2002 what he knows now, he never would have supported the war in Iraq 
in the first place.
  These words are from William F. Buckley, a man author Lee Edwards 
described as the ``godfather'' of the conservative movement.
  There never was anything conservative about the war in Iraq. I said 
from the start that it would mean massive foreign aid, huge deficit 
spending, and that it was not far to place almost all the entire burden 
of enforcing U.N. resolutions on our taxpayers and our military. 
Conservatives have traditionally been the biggest critics of the U.N., 
and the worst part of all, of course, is all the deaths.
  All to bring do not an evil man, but one whose military budget was 2/
10ths of 1 percent of ours and who was no threat to us whatsoever.
  Two months before the House voted to authorize the war in Iraq, our 
then-Majority leader, Dick Armey, said, ``I don't believe that America 
will justifiably make an attack on another Nation. My on view would be 
to let him, Saddam Hussein, rant and rave all he wants and let that be 
a matter between he and his own country. We should not be addressing 
any attack or resources against him.''
  Mr. Armey understood there was nothing conservative about the war in 
Iraq.
  I voted in 1998 to give $100 million to the Iraqi opposition to help 
them remove Hussein. We should have let the Iraqis remove Hussein 
instead of sending our troops to fight and die there. Iraq had not 
attacked us or even threatened to attack us, and they were not even 
able to attack us.
  By the end of this year, we will have spent $300 billion in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, with probably 85 to 90 percent of that being in Iraq.
  But are we following the latest advice by William F. Buckley in 
getting out? No. Unfortunately, we are doing just the opposite.
  Paul Wolfowitz, the father of this war, told the House Committee on 
Armed Services several months ago that we would have to be in Iraq for 
at least 10 years.
  Last week, a Congressional Quarterly headline said, ``with ink just 
dry on War Supplemental, more spending expected before August.''
  The Congress has just approved $82 billion more and now we are told 
we will be asked for even more as early as this coming August.
  Instead of getting out, as William Buckley has recommended, Congress 
Daily reported last week that a Congressional Research Service study 
``portends a more permanent presence'' in Iraq and the Middle East.
  The report noted approval of $2.2 billion for additional military 
construction in the Middle East, supporting activities in Iraq, 
including $75 million for an airfield in Kuwait, $66 million for an air 
base in the United Arab Emirates, and $43 million for a new runway in 
Uzbekistan.
  At a time, Mr. Speaker, when we are closing down bases in the U.S., 
we are building like crazy all over the world, especially in Iraq and 
the Middle East.
  I am pro-military and pro-national defense, but I do not believe we 
can shoulder the defense of the entire world.
  Our Founding Fathers would be shocked at what we are doing, and most 
of what we have done in Iraq is pure foreign aid, rebuilding roads, 
several thousand schools, power plants, bridges, water systems, free 
medical care and on and on and on. I believe in having a strong 
Department of Defense, but I do not believe it should be a department 
of foreign aid.
  Syndicated columnist Georgie Ann Geyer wrote, ``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.''
  Seventeen American soldiers were killed in Iraq over the last two 
weekends and a few others during the week.
  Some have said if we pull out a civil war would erupt there. Well, 
what do my colleagues think we have there now?
  We should at least stop the killing of American kids, heed the advice 
of William F. Buckley, Junior, and begin a phased and orderly 
withdrawal.
  We cannot afford to stay there for years either in terms of lives or 
money.

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