[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 22034]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1200
                   BUSH INITIATES IRAQ POLICY REVIEW

  (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, headline today, Bush initiates Iraq policy 
review separate from Baker's group. Now, this might be good; it might 
be bad. Remember, the Bush administration ignored the advice of the 
State Department Middle East experts about postwar Iraq. He actually 
ignored the intelligence agencies, the real experts, as opposed to the 
phony group Dick Cheney put together. Is he now again going to end-run 
real experts who are going to give us real choices on how to extricate 
the United States from Iraq, get our troops out of the middle of a 
civil war and begin to have those people take care of their own 
problems?
  Only time will tell, but this does cause tremendous concern that 
suddenly he is going to appoint yet another group in his own 
administration. It seems like he may want to counterbalance or pick and 
choose among the real recommendations. Hopefully, they are not going to 
give us another vacuous document like they did a year ago, the so-
called national strategy for victory in Iraq, which has been an abysmal 
failure.

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