[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3521-3522]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         IRAQI WOMEN DELEGATION

  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of 
turn.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from California?
  There was no objection.
  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, there haven't been any front-page articles 
in the newspapers about it. Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World 
Report haven't covered it either. And the big news channels are pretty 
much silent.
  But the fact that a group of courageous Iraqi women came to the 
United States last week to tell their stories is nothing short of 
remarkable. To get here, they had to brave the treacherous 500-mile 
stretch from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan. Then they had to clear U.S. 
Customs, no easy undertaking, and fly from Amman to New York.
  The stories they shared when they visited the Halls of Congress were 
both strikingly sad and extremely valuable. But you wouldn't know it 
unless you had met with them personally, because the American media has 
hardly reported a single word they said.
  Too often in this Chamber we have heard that the media isn't doing a 
good enough job of covering the war in Iraq. Well, you know what? They 
are right. The media isn't doing a good enough job. The media isn't 
reporting about the destroyed hospitals, roads and schools, not to 
mention the shattered lives, shattered lives throughout Iraq.
  The media isn't talking about the tens of thousands, maybe hundreds 
of thousands, of Iraqi civilians who have been killed over the last 3 
years of war and occupation. And they are not telling us that some 50 
percent of those killed have been women and children, or that thousands 
of Iraqis have been unnecessarily detained or have gone missing.
  But the women who flew from Amman to New York talked about what is 
really happening in Iraq, about some of the burdens they bear every day 
as a result of our politics there.
  One of these women was Faiza Al-Araji, a mother of three from 
Baghdad. Faiza's son, Khalid, was a student at Baghdad University. Last 
year he was arrested by officials from Iraq's Ministry of the Interior 
for no apparent reason. He was never charged with a crime and his 
family was not told about his whereabouts for 3 days. To secure her 
son's release after Khalid was finally allowed to call home, Faiza had 
to pay a ransom to the Ministry of the Interior.
  As if she hadn't already suffered enough, last year, gunmen put a 
rifle to Faiza's head and stole her car. When she told a group of 
American soldiers what had just happened, they told her, There is 
nothing we can do. When she told her story to the Iraqi police, they 
told her, I am sorry, my sister, but there is nothing we can do.
  Mr. Speaker, we have nearly 150,000 soldiers stationed throughout 
Iraq, many of them in Baghdad. If they can't keep the Iraqi people 
safe, and if the local police can't keep them safe, why are we there?
  After going through these ordeals, Faiza and her family moved to 
Amman, Jordan where it is safer. She has dedicated herself to telling 
the truths about Iraq, the truths that our media isn't telling us.
  Mr. Speaker, I would encourage anyone watching tonight to visit 
Faiza's blog, www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com.

[[Page 3522]]

  Sadly, what Faiza and the rest of the Iraqi women's delegation have 
revealed is what many of us have suspected for months, that an Iraqi 
civil war isn't imminent; it is going on right now, right before our 
very eyes. Shiite and Sunni militias have been fighting each other and 
targeting innocent civilians for months. Well more than 2,000 people 
have been killed since the bombing of the famed gold-domed Shiite 
shrine in Samarra last month. And the situation will not get better 
until we bring our troops home.
  Mr. Speaker, how many more innocent Iraqis, mothers, fathers and 
their children need to be killed before we realize that our policies in 
Iraq are not working?
  How many more of our troops have to be killed before we bring them 
home?
  Faiza and the rest of the Iraqi delegation know that it is time for 
our troops to leave. Nearly two-thirds of the American people share 
this belief. It is time for Congress to catch up.

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