[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2229-2230]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  TIME FOR A CHANGE IN POLICY IN IRAQ

  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of 
order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from 
Illinois is recognized for 5 minutes.
  There was no objection.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, March 19 will mark the 3-year anniversary 
of the Iraq war. For 3 years, we have heard the President respond to 
questions about his handling of the war in Iraq with, ``Who are you 
going to believe, me or your own eyes?'' Kind of like what Groucho Marx 
used to say.
  For 3 years, we have seen the President and his supporters celebrate 
milestones in Iraq as an indication that the insurgency was ``in its 
last throes,'' while the insurgency actually continues to grow and 
persist.
  While the administration keeps trying to spin its way out of Iraq, we 
keep witnessing the truth. Today, for instance, John Negroponte told 
the Senate Armed Services Committee, ``Even if a broad and inclusive 
national government emerges, there will almost certainly be a lag time 
before we see any dampening effect on the insurgency.'' In other words, 
even if we establish a functioning government and democracy, the 
insurgency in Iraq will persist, just the opposite of what the 
administration has been telling us.
  Mr. Speaker, it is time that the President acknowledge what we can 
all see with our own eyes every night, that the administration's 
failure to secure the peace early in Iraq has led Iraq to the brink it 
is in today. Had we secured not just the war, but the first days of the 
occupation with a plan for that occupation and actually secured the 
country and had not allowed the first levels of insurgency to grow, to 
metastasize to what we have today, we would never have what we have 
now. But we went in with a plan for the war with not a single idea, not 
an iota of anything to do on the occupation.
  Three years ago, brave men and women of the American Armed Forces 
fought brilliantly until defeating Saddam Hussein and his army. But the 
President failed to plan for the peace, and he failed to work quickly 
to establish order in Iraq and left it leaderless. In fact, many of our 
troops were on the sidelines as looting went rampant throughout Iraq, 
leading in that stage every way sequentially to what we have today. And 
why did it fail? Because he didn't listen to what we knew we had to do.
  For the past 3 years, the President has maintained that if the 
American leaders in Iraq needed more troops, all they had to do was 
ask. Just last week the President said, ``I will determine the troop 
levels in Iraq based on the recommendations of our commanders, not 
based only the politics of Washington, D.C.''
  Paul Bremer, the Ambassador to Iraq, the President's top man in Iraq, 
called for more boots on the ground in the days following the invasion 
and was ignored. On page 10 of Paul Bremer's book, ``My Year in Iraq,'' 
Paul Bremer writes that he was alarmed by a report stating that we did 
not have enough troops on the ground to stabilize the country.
  The report said: ``The population of Iraq today is nearly 25 million. 
The population would require 500,000 troops on the ground to meet a 
standard of 20 troops per 1,000. This number is more than three times 
the number of foreign troops now deployed in Iraq.''
  Paul Bremer writes: ``I found the conclusions persuasive and 
troubling. That afternoon, I had a summary of the draft copied and sent 
down the corridor to Don Rumsfeld. `I think you should consider this,' 
I said in my cover memo. I have never heard back from him about the 
report.''
  Now, I am not here to help sell books for Paul Bremer, but the 
President's top man asked for more troops to succeed in Iraq and never 
got an answer from either the President of the United States or from 
the Secretary of Defense. When Secretary Don Rumsfeld completely 
ignores the man who is in charge of America's most important policy 
mission, we have a problem.
  A few days later, Paul Bremer got a chance to air his concerns to the 
President: ``There is one other important issue, Mr. President. Troop 
levels.''
  Troop levels never increased. The troop level never got up. In Iraq, 
Bremer's worst fears were realized, and he writes: ``According to 
CENTCOM briefings in Qatar, we didn't yet have enough troops in Baghdad 
to secure key tactical objectives, traffic circles, bridges, power 
plants, banks and munition dumps, and also patrol the streets.''
  We will never know for sure if more troops would have secured Baghdad 
in time to prevent the insurgency we see today, but we do know that the 
President's top man had asked for help and the President failed to 
respond, and the Secretary of Defense failed to respond; and today we 
are seeing the results of that failure. And we do know that 136,000 men 
and women who are there now do not have the support that they need.
  If you look today in the New York Times in a poll done by Mr. Zogby, 
the American troops don't think we have enough troops. They also don't 
think we should continue to stay there at the level that we are there.

[[Page 2230]]

  Retired Army Lieutenant General Bill Odom, former head of the 
National Security Agency, said that the invasion of Iraq ``will turn 
out to be the greatest single strategic disaster in U.S. foreign 
policy.''
  Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of 
staff at the State Department, said President Bush's foreign policy was 
``ruinous'' and said that ``we have courted disaster in Iraq, North 
Korea, and in Iran.''
  Mr. Speaker, it is time for a change in policy.

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