[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 15817-15818]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   IRAQ WAR POWERS REPEAL ACT OF 2006

  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, on October 10, 2002, despite the objections 
of 133 Members, myself included, this body, the House of 
Representatives, voted to give the President of the United States the 
authority to launch a preemptive strike against Iraq.
  If we had the information on that day that we have now, I wonder how 
many votes the war resolution would have garnered. If we had known that 
Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction; if we had known that 
the President was hell bent on going to war no matter what, regardless 
of the intelligence, with or without the U.N.'s blessing; if we had 
known that we would have still been occupying Iraq nearly 4 years 
later; if we had known that our occupation would give rise to a violent 
insurgency, sectarian strife, and all-out civil war; if we had known 
that the cost of this war would approach $.5 trillion; if we had known 
that more than 2,550 brave Americans would never come home and 
thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians would be killed for the 
sake of their so-called liberation; if we had known of the atrocities 
and constitutional desecrations that would be committed in the name of 
war, from Abu Ghraib to domestic spying to Guantanamo Bay.
  Along with many of my colleagues, I raised these concerns at the 
time. We were vocal critics of the war before we even knew what a 
debacle it would become. But our objections were ignored and our voices 
drowned out by a steady drumbeat of misinformation coming from the 
administration and its allies. They raised the specter of a mushroom

[[Page 15818]]

cloud in the chilling and disingenuous words of Condoleezza Rice. They 
insisted that the Iraqi people would greet us as liberators. They 
claimed that the war would be a cakewalk, with minimal cost of lives 
and taxpayer dollars. They assured us that the Iraq invasion would 
spread freedom and democracy throughout the Middle East, an assertion 
that has been proven tragically wrong by the recent hostilities between 
Israel and Lebanon. Anyone who disagreed with this view of the Iraq 
occupation had his or her loyalty of America called into question.
  Today the American people know the truth, that those of us who seemed 
like lonely dissenters were right all along. The American people agree 
that it is time to find a way out of Iraq, to end this occupation, 
because they know you cannot win an occupation.
  Our troops have been put in an impossible position without the proper 
training or equipment. They are being asked to carry out an open-ended 
occupation of a country wracked with centuries-old religious conflict 
and few democratic conditions on which to fall back. Moreover, this 
occupation has no legitimacy whatsoever, having never been authorized 
or ratified by the United States Congress.
  So today I introduced the Iraq War Powers Repeal Act of 2006. It 
would reverse the fateful decision of nearly 4 years ago and allow 
Congress to reassert its constitutional authority on matters of war and 
peace. It would strip from the President the powers he has shamelessly 
abused. From there we can and we must end this occupation, while using 
diplomacy, humanitarian and peacekeeping tools to help Iraq achieve 
long-term security and stability. But we must return Iraq to the Iraqis 
and return our brave soldiers to their families here at home, who 
anxiously await their return.

                          ____________________