[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12575-12576]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                SMART SECURITY AND IRAQ WITHDRAWAL PLAN

  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, our Constitution states that Members of 
Congress must be chosen by the people of the United States, and 
Congress must represent the people of the United States. That means 
that we as Members of Congress need to listen and need to act when the 
people speak.

[[Page 12576]]

  Well, the American people have spoken. The last Gallup poll released 
earlier this week indicates that the American people are ready for our 
military forces in Iraq to start coming home. Nearly 60 percent of 
Americans believe that the U.S. should bring home some or all of our 
troops from Iraq. Just as revealing, the Gallup poll showed that only 
36 percent of Americans support maintaining our current troop levels in 
Iraq. This is the lowest level of support for the war since it began in 
March of 2003.
  The American people have stated loud and clear where they stand, and 
their numbers are increasing. They know that the only way to keep our 
sons and daughters from being killed in Iraq, and the only way to end 
the death and destruction that occur there every single day, is to 
begin the process of bringing our troops home. Clearly, the American 
people are way ahead of Congress on this issue.
  Unfortunately, the President of the United States is way behind on 
the issue of Iraq. We have asked the President to come up with a plan 
for ending the war. He has not, so we will.
  Our efforts to come up with a plan began in January when I introduced 
legislation calling for the President to begin bringing our troops 
home. Thirty-five Members of Congress support this legislation. We 
continued our effort on May 25 when I introduced an amendment to the 
defense authorization bill calling on the President to create a plan 
for Iraq. Mr. Speaker, 128 Members of Congress, including five 
Republicans and one Independent, voted in favor of this sensible 
amendment.
  It is clear that the United States must develop a smarter agenda for 
Iraq than a continued military occupation, because the 2-year war has 
left us disturbingly weakened against the true security threats that we 
face here at home. Let us not forget, Osama bin Laden is still at 
large, and al Qaeda continues to recruit new members in Iraq and 
elsewhere every single day. So, we ask the President to create a plan 
and bring it to the Congress that will bring our troops home. Once they 
are home, we can secure the U.S. and Iraq for the future, and we can 
use a smarter resolution, which is a Sensible Multilateral American 
Response to Terrorism for the 21st Century. It will help us address the 
threats we face as a Nation.
  SMART Security will prevent future acts of terrorism by addressing 
the root conditions which give rise to terrorism in the first place: 
poverty, despair, resource scarcity, and lack of educational 
opportunities, to mention just a few. SMART Security encourages the 
United States to work with other nations to address the most pressing 
global issues. SMART Security addresses global crises diplomatically 
instead of by resorting to armed conflict.
  Instead of maintaining a long-term military occupation of Iraq, our 
future efforts to help the Iraqi people must follow the SMART approach: 
humanitarian assistance, coordinated with our international allies, to 
rebuild Iraq's war-torn physical and economic infrastructure.
  That is what I mean when I talk about SMART Security. We can defend 
America by relying on the very best of American values: our commitment 
to peace and freedom, our compassion for the people of the world, and 
our capacity for multilateral leadership.
  Mr. Speaker, we must follow a smarter approach as we work to help the 
Iraqi people, which means implementing a plan to end the war in Iraq. I 
invite the President, I invite all Americans and all Members of 
Congress, to join in this effort.

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